


Little Toy Soldiers

by thegraytigress



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Christmas, Drama, Family Issues, Holidays, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt Steve Rogers, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Romance, Slow Build, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-09 13:22:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 40,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8892358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegraytigress/pseuds/thegraytigress
Summary: Each and every Christmas...  As long as they're together, nothing else matters.





	1. 1924

**Author's Note:**

> **DISCLAIMER:** _Captain America: The First Avenger_ , _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_ , and _Captain America: Civil War_ are the properties of Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Studios, and Marvel Studios. This work was created purely for enjoyment. No money was made, and no infringement was intended.
> 
>  **RATING:** M (for language, violence, adult situations)
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This was supposed to be a cute, fluffy Stucky Christmas carol and ended up as an angsty, holiday-themed, slow build, 40k-word monster. I can't seem to write anything short and sweet anymore. Anyway, I did as much research as I could for this, but I'm sure there are some historical inaccuracies. Please let me know if you spot any. Also, Bucky deals with quite a bit of self-doubt and internalized frustration over his feelings for Steve and how they strain his relationship with his family, his father in particular. If that's triggering to you, please read at your own discretion. I wouldn't say there's any outward homophobia in this story (a lot of it is Bucky's fear more than anything that really happens to either Steve or Bucky), but be advised. Expect a chapter a day through New Year's.
> 
> Enjoy, everyone, and happy holidays! Thank you all for an amazing year of writing and reading and being a part of this fandom!

It’s Christmas, 1924.

Steve’s looking around their apartment like it’s a palace.  His eyes are big, blue saucers.  Bucky can’t help being just a little proud at that.  His ma catches him grinning, gives him that frown that’s equal parts disappointment and admonition.  He can’t help it, though.  It’s their first Christmas in Brooklyn after moving from Indiana, and their place looks really nice.  It’s pretty big (well, a lot bigger than the Rogers’ apartment in the next building over at any rate) and it’s decorated with garland and tinsel and a big Christmas tree that’s making everything smell like pine.  It’s warm and homey.  Bucky’s even got his own room, which he never had back in Shelbyville.

That’s where he takes Steve first.  His room.  It’s not grand by any means, little more than a tiny section that’s been walled off from his sisters’ room, but it’s all his.  It’s got his bed and his toys and his old, nicked desk and, best of all, a door that closes and keeps his sisters out.  He does that first and foremost, closes the door because Becca and Mary are following them like they always do.  Becca is Steve’s age and just started school with him.  She’s a tag-along, a really annoying one, too.  Mary follows her, even though Mary’s only four and can’t do half the things the bigger kids can, but she’s stubborn as an ox and louder than any four year old should be.  Eleanor’s wailing in ma’s arms; she’s cutting teeth, so she’s loud, too, shrieking all the time.  Ma’s patting her bottom through her holiday gown and Steve’s mother is commenting about how sweet and pretty she is.  Bucky rolls his eyes just as the door seals shut.

Steve seems lost, still looking at everything like he can’t believe it.  He’s never been to Bucky’s apartment before.  They only met a few months back.  Their mothers crossed paths at the grocer’s right before school started, Steve a quiet thing behind Sarah Rogers’ skirts as Bucky’s ma chatted loudly about how much she likes the city.  Steve’s mother is quiet, too, slight in stature, rail thin and delicate, but young and beautiful with blonde hair and those same big blue eyes.  The two women are an odd pairing if there ever was one, Steve’s mother so light and soft and serious contrasting with Bucky’s, who’s all strong temperament and loud voice and dark coloring.  Bucky likes that they complement each other.  He likes Steve’s mother a lot.  He likes that his ma seems to have quickly found a friend.

And he likes Steve.  Steve’s really little for their age, and Steve always seems like he’s having trouble breathing, and Steve’s quieter than any kid Bucky’s ever seen, but Steve’s something else.  First impressions aren’t always true, given he stood there with Ma at the grocer’s, staring at the blond kid, waiting for him to do something other than stare silently but defiantly right back like he was daring Bucky to make the first move.  Neither of them ever did, not that day anyway.  Needless to say, later that week Bucky was pretty surprised to find that little twig standing up to a couple kids much bigger than him who were trying to take Allison Wagner’s pocket money.  Steve was outnumbered, outgunned, out- _everythinged_ , and there he was, planting himself between Allison and the older boys all lit-up with fire in his eyes and his hands in fists and his little body like a shield.  Of course Bucky went in there and stopped the bigger kids from doing something more than just pushing him down and flinging insults at him like barbs, but right then and there, as he pulled little Steve Rogers to his feet, helped him dust off his trousers, held out his hand…  _“I’m James.  Everyone calls me Bucky.”_

_“Why?”_

_“My dad’s dad was Buchanan Barnes, back in the old country.  So that’s my name now.  James Buchanan Barnes.”_

_“Kind of a mouthful.”_

_“What’s your name?”_

_“Steve.”_   Then Steve thought better of it and puffed out his little chest like it was a competition.Like he wanted to be bigger. _“Steven Grant Rogers.  Mine’s a mouthful, too.”_  It’s not, but Bucky laughed.  Right then and there as they shook hands, as Steve grinned a big grin, Bucky knew they were meant to be friends.  Right then and there.  _“Nice to meet you, Bucky.”_

Because Ma and Steve’s mother were already close and getting closer, and Steve and his mother are alone except for each other, having them over for Christmas after church seemed like a given.  Ma even mentioned to Pop about it becoming a tradition if things work out nicely, winking at Bucky like she, too, instantly knew they were all meant to find each other.  Ma’s real big on traditions, on family, and more’s always welcome.  So here Steve is, looking around Bucky’s room with his big eyes and floppy blond hair, grinning in awe.  Bucky has modesty enough to feel a smidge bad when Steve doesn’t even look the least bit jealous.  “It’s no great shakes,” he says self-deprecatingly.

“You kiddin’?” Steve replies, shaking his head.  “It’s…  It’s amazin’.”  Compared to Steve’s nook in his own apartment, it is.  That Bucky has seen, though it took a couple walks home from school together before Steve got the courage to invite him up.  Bucky’s young, but he realizes why.  Their tenement is dark, cluttered, very clean but very small.  His mother can’t afford anything bigger.  Steve sleeps on a cot in what amounts to a closet.  He has to sit on his mother’s bed to see through the window.  He spends a second looking at Bucky’s, the view Bucky has of the street through nice blue curtains.  Their building is newer, so every room _has_ a window.  It’s a good view.  Steve’s eyes devour it, like he’s memorizing the details, analyzing how they go together.  “This is great.”

Bucky beams.  He goes to his bed, where he laid out all of his toys he got for Christmas that morning before church.  Steve comes to stand beside him, and his eyes go impossibly wider.  “Wow,” he breathes, beholding array of stuff.  A new shiny, red yo-yo and fancy marbles and a couple books and some die-cast trucks and cars.  Bucky’s pride, though, are the toy soldiers his uncle sent him.  Uncle Dan’s still back in Shelbyville, his ma’s younger brother who served in the Great War.  The soldiers are very nice, pewter Bucky thinks, with incredible detail etched into them.  There are five of them, five different American soldiers in five different poses.  A couple kneel, and two run holding their rifles, and one’s pointing onward, standing strong and obviously leading the others.  The set probably cost a pretty penny.  Ma’s not too pleased with the gift; they’re not toys, not really, and she knows Bucky’ll lose them in short order.  Bucky loves them, though.  They’re neat, and they fit into his palm, and for some reason they remind him of home.

Steve’s staring at them, too, like they’re a magnet to his eyes.  Bucky’s figured he’d like them, since he doesn’t know too much about Steve yet other than the fact Steve’s father died from being hit with mustard gas on the Western Front.  Steve was really proud to tell him that a few weeks back, that Joseph Rogers was a soldier who valiantly served his country even though said service left his wife a widow and his son without a father.  _“My dad was a soldier with the 107 th Infantry, and one day I’m gonna be like him.”_  He said that a bunch of times, and every time he meant every word.

Still Steve’s got too many manners to just pick one up, even though it’s pretty obvious he wants to, and Bucky’s got mixed feelings about that at any rate because these are _his_ and they’re _special_.  “You got all this?” Steve asks.

Again Bucky grins, pleased as punch with his haul.  Pop had a really good year; they moved to New York because he could earn a better wage as a foreman here than in Indiana.  So for Christmas he’s gotten more than before, and he’s giddy with it.  New toys.  The yo-yo alone’s going to keep him busy for ages.

“Wow,” Steve breathes again, only this time it’s softer, less awestruck and more forlorn.

That snaps Bucky from his pleased appraisal of it all, and he turns to his new friend.  “It’s nothin’,” he says.  He thinks of his ma’s frown and what Father O’Malley says in mass sometimes.  _“Be mindful of the less fortunate.”_   Even though they just moved here, he knows Ma and Pop are doing well, always have because Pop can read and write and is a skilled laborer and Ma’s needlepoint is so good people line up to pay for it, but he understands not everyone has the things he has.  Just like how Steve’s apartment isn’t as roomy and nice as theirs, Steve maybe didn’t get as many toys as he did.  Steve’s mother is a nurse, and she works long, hard hours, but they’re still really poor.  And it’s not just them.  Lots of kids probably didn’t get this many.  Shame colors Bucky’s cheeks a little, and he feels bad for being proud.  “What’d you get?”

Steve looks away, ducking his head.  He doesn’t say anything, and Bucky doesn’t understand why, not at first.  He takes it as Steve not wanting to gloat about something.  That’s how Steve is.  “Come on,” Bucky prods.  “What’d you get?”

Steve’s mouth falls open speechlessly and his perpetually pale cheeks color.  It still takes Bucky a second to get it, and he feels horrible when he does.  “Oh.”

Steve didn’t get _anything._

“Ma couldn’t…  Not this year.  Maybe in a few weeks.”  Steve’s sheepish as he admits that, like it’s something to be embarrassed about.  It’s pretty obvious he doesn’t have much faith in her being able to make good on that promise, that he’s hoping but not expecting.  Bucky can’t fathom that, not getting anything for Christmas.  He’s embarrassed for Steve just thinking about the next time they go to school, where everyone will be excitedly talking about their holiday, the gifts they got and the things they did.  Steve will be silent, unable to join in, unable to share in it.  Even at their tender age, that’s a miserable image.

Bucky can’t stand it, not that or the sad look in Steve’s eyes right now or the way his thin shoulders slump or the way he’s trying so valiantly to act tougher than he is about it.  The way he’s chewing his lower lip while he tries _not_ to look at those new toys, tries not to care, tries not to feel left out.  Bucky can just see it from his expression, the one he always has when he gets passed over because he’s too small.  They’ve only known each other a little while but Bucky already hates how Steve feels like he doesn’t need and shouldn’t want anything more than the barest of the bare.

That’s not how it should be today.  Not today.  Father O’Malley said that during his sermon that morning.  _“Be caring.  Be giving.  If your table overflows, give to those who have not, on this day more than any other.  God loves those who love others in His name.”_   Bucky’s not sure about God, because he doesn’t understand why God would want him to sit through long sermons when he could be doing something better like playing or reading or helping Pop or basically _anything_ else.  Still, he knows in his heart that there’s nothing good or fair about Steve getting nothing for Christmas.  He can’t let that be the way it is.

So he takes the soldier who’s pointing, the one who looks like he’s leading the troops, and without another thought, hands it to Steve.  “Take it.”

Steve looks confused.  “Huh?”

“Take it.  It’s yours.”

Steve’s gaze goes from the soldier to Bucky’s face.  He frowns, and there it is with the disliking sympathy and charity (mistaking it, really, for pity or being patronizing).  “Naw, Bucky, I can’t do that.”

Bucky’s not going to accept no for an answer.  “ _Take it._   I got lots.  I don’t need one more.”

Steve shakes his head.  “But it’s the best one.”

It is.  He looks at the little toy soldier, standing in all of his silver finery with his arm outstretched to command his men.  It’ll be hard to let it go, but hanging onto it isn’t as important as making sure Steve’s happy.  He knows that in his heart.  “It’s fine.”

Steve hesitates a little bit longer, searching Bucky’s face like he’s trying to figure out if he can trust him.  Bucky just waits.  You have to with Steve sometimes.  He’s stubborn as a mule, particularly about things he doesn’t think are right or fair.  Finally, Steve takes the little soldier, holds it in his hand, stares at it.  He smiles, and it’s small at first but only because he’s holding himself back.  Bucky watches that little twist of his lips grow and grow, blossom from a tentative thing into a full-fledged grin.  He’s never seen Steve smile quite like that.  It hurts letting the toy go, because it was his and it’s special, but seeing Steve happy…

He likes that much more than any toy.  _That’s_ special.

“Wow,” Steve says, balancing the little pewter man on the flat of his palm, staring almost reverently at it.  Like it’s the nicest, richest thing he’s ever had.  Maybe it is.  His eyes twinkle when he looks up again.  “Thanks, Buck!”

Bucky beams all over again.  “Sure, Steve.”

They spend the rest of the afternoon in Bucky’s room with the door closed, playing with the toy soldiers, making pretend _they_ are soldiers themselves fighting valiantly against the Germans.  When that gets old, they move onto the other toys, practicing with the yo-yo and rolling the cars around and flicking the marbles at one another, laughing and talking excitedly, enjoying it all without a care in the world.  Eventually Ma calls them to dinner, and they go running out to sit at the table.  Everyone’s gathered now, Bucky’s parents, Bucky’s little sisters, Steve’s mother, and Steve and Bucky are sitting side by side.  On the table the roast chicken looks delicious, accompanied by potatoes and cabbage and Jell-O and freshly baked bread, and Bucky’s ready to eat.  They all are.

They hold hands and Pop says grace.  Then they serve the food and start eating, start forming a new tradition between their two families.  Steve’s mother smiles, petting Steve’s head once as he eats heartily, glowing with happiness at being included in the Barnes family’s celebration.  At her son having something good for Christmas.  And Steve’s glowing, too.  The whole meal, Steve’s grinning around his food, and Bucky knows he’s got the little toy soldier tucked in the pocket of his trousers.


	2. 1928

It’s Christmas, 1928.

Bucky spends it in bed.  Two days back he busted his leg up good.  Joe Kinney got a new bike from a wealthy aunt visiting New York City, and he and a bunch of other, older boys from the neighborhood were playing around with it in the street.  They invited Bucky to play with them.  The snow’s already piling up in a cold, dreary December, and the road was icier than they realized.  A short stop with the bike sent it skidding and sliding into a parked car, which in turn sent Bucky flying over the handlebars and slamming into the side of the vehicle.  He fractured his right ankle and earned his father’s wrath for smashing the window of a neighbor’s auto.  Not a great way to start the holiday.

Now he’s laying down, staring at the snow falling outside his window.  It’s really pretty, a curtain of soft, fluffy flakes, the kind that’s great for making snowballs and forts.  That only heightens the fact that he’s _stuck_ in here with his leg aching so bad he wants to cry and with the rest of his family outside enjoying the holiday.  He knows they’re keeping it sedate this year on account of the fact that he can’t really participate (and the fact that his father has been in a right foul mood since the incident, the doctor’s bills piling on top of what he owes Mr. Jarecki for his car, and Mr. Jarecki is an old cad who’s been nothing but mean to everyone on their block, the women especially, so having to pay him for _anything_ salts Pop something fierce).  Pop keeps threatening to sell Bucky’s Christmas gifts to make up for the money (and Ma keeps assuring him he won’t, but Bucky’s too miserable to believe her).  Fact is Joe Kinney’s trouble, and they were riding that bike too fast and horsing around like a bunch of hooligans.  Fact is Joey dared Bucky to speed off on it like that, to throw snow and ice at the cars while he was doing it.  Fact is he shouldn’t have been there in the first place, especially after Ma told him to stay away from those kids.

Christmas is awful this year.

The smell of roasting chicken and bread is filling the apartment.  Even through the closed door of his bedroom, the aroma is warm and welcoming.  His sisters are loud, playing with their new Christmas toys.  Bucky’s are still wrapped under the tree.  Ma says maybe he can open them a little later, after he’s slept some.  His leg hurts badly enough that sleeping’s been a trial, so he dozed fitfully through Christmas morning, through mass, through half the day.  Despite all that, he’s tired and miserable and feeling so alone.

The snows falls and falls.

Sometime later when he’s drifting again, there’s a knock on the door.  “James?”  It’s Ma.  She opens the door and stands there in her apron that’s covering her nice Christmas dress.  She has a little smile on her face.  “Steve’s here.”

Instantly Bucky perks up, surprised and so relieved.  Steve comes in once Ma is out of the way.  He’s got his wool coat on, his newer one, and his hat, though he takes that off and shakes the watery snow from it.  Despite the fact that he’s ten now (and that the Barnes family is feeding him multiple nights a week), he still looks scrawny, skinnier than any kid should be.  His cheeks are flushed with the cold, but it’s a healthy flush.  Over the last few years, Bucky’s gotten really good at reading Steve’s coloring, the different tells he has for how he’s feeling when he won’t be honest about it.  This time it’s nothing.

The frown’s not nothing, though.  “What’d you do?” Steve demands as he comes closer.

Bucky grits his teeth.  “How come you’re here?”

“Same as ever.  Came with mom.”  Steve shrugs, scuffs his shoe a little.  Lately things haven’t been so good between them.  Bucky doesn’t even remember how or when it started.  When the school year did, he supposes.  Bucky’s big for his age, and Steve’s small.  Bucky’s athletic, and Steve’s scrawny and unable to participate in most everything because of his ill health.  Bucky’s popular, and Steve’s definitely not.  And Bucky’s older.  He’s a grade ahead of Steve, and for the first time since they started school, that means something.  _The older crowd._   Bucky wanted to be a part of that right away, the bigger kids, the ones who’re hanging at the automat and smoking and talking about forbidden things like girls and drinking and necking.  The lightheartedness of the lower grades was gone all at once, and it became a scary race to either join in or lose out.  Suddenly he was hanging with boys like Joey Kinney, the ones who were troublemakers more than anything else.  Suddenly he and Steve, who were all but inseparable, attached at the hip as Steve’s mother always says, aren’t close anymore.

By the time Bucky realized it was happening, it felt like it was already too late.  And Joe and his ilk kept assuring him he was better for it.  They kept telling him that he was too good for Steve, that no one wanted a runt like him around, that Steve was weird and stupid and sick all the time and an all-around drag.  Bucky was too scared to defend Steve; these guys could wipe the floor with him, and getting _in_ with their crowd was the whole point. But it bothered him a lot, that more than once he caught Joey or one of the other guys picking on a smaller kid or laughing at the misfortunes of one of the social outcasts in their neighborhood.  Pulling pranks and bothering other people in the name of fun and mischief.  They never preyed on Steve, but that wasn’t because they thought it was wrong or thought that Steve didn’t deserve it.

Anyway, he and Steve stopped hanging together so much.  It just died, everything that seemed so strong between them.  Bucky’s ma and Steve’s mother were trying to figure it out, but they didn’t pressure them about it (well, Bucky can’t imagine Steve’s mother, as soft-spoken as she is, pressuring Steve about anything, but Ma has been silently disapproving for weeks, unhappy enough about it that Bucky’s been frowned at more in the last couple months than he has in the entirety of the eleven years of his life).  Bucky tried to tell her (and himself) that he was moving on, bigger and better things, but he felt rotten at his mother’s scowl.  Every time he saw Steve on the playground that bad feeling got worse.  And worse still every time they ran into each other without really speaking.  Everything was awkward and tense between them.  It felt inherently _wrong_ , like he’s messing something up royally.  He’s taken care of Steve since that day in the alley, helped him when he was too sick to go to school, sat with him in his apartment when he had a fever and couldn’t go out and play.  He stood between Steve and the bigger kids, the bullies.  Now _he’s_ a bigger kid and a bully.

He’s recognizing that more and more.  Doesn’t matter if he never said anything mean or teased anyone else or made someone scared.  He stood there and watched.  _Complicit._   That’s one of the vocabulary words they’ve been studying in class.  He’s learned what it means better than he could from any book.  And he’s learning he doesn’t want to be that.

Steve stares at him, like he’s letting Bucky have a chance to come to his own conclusions.  “Heard from Donovan that you broke Mr. Jarecki’s car with that bike.  Heard you banged yourself up but good.  Thought I should see it.”

Bucky grumps.  “Well, you’re seein’ it.”  He turns away, too proud to let Steve notice how embarrassed and angry he is.

Steve notices it, anyway.  Just as he knows Steve’s tells, Steve knows his.  “Becca says your dad’s not letting you open any of your presents.”  Bucky grits his teeth and pulls his blankets tighter around himself.  “He really doing that?”

“Probably,” Bucky grumbles.  He expects Steve’s admonition to pile onto the top of the heap.  The problem is, and even at their young age, he knows Steve’s a lot better than anyone gives him credit for.  He’s a good kid, through and through, a hard worker and smart.  What he lacks in constitution he more than makes up for in heart.  He never complains, never whines, never even talks down about anything even though life’s dealt him a real bad hand.  He’s always the first to help, the last to quit, the one going the extra mile even though his body’s not built for that.  Steve’s got a sharp mouth, too; that’s what gets him into trouble all the time.  He’s not afraid to call someone out on their behavior, which leads to the vast majority of the fights Bucky’s always pulling him out of.  So Steve not telling him he deserved what he got for throwing his lot in with a bad crowd?  Not likely.

But he doesn’t say a thing like that.  He just sighs and shrugs a bit.  “This ain’t you, Buck.  You’re smarter and stronger.  You’re _better_ than all of those guys combined.  And doing this?  All this stupid stuff to fit in?  To be like them?”  Steve shakes his head.  “All it’s doing is making you like _them_.”

Bucky stares at him.  Steve stares back.  Bucky smiles.  Steve smiles back.  Then he reaches in his pocket and pulls something out.  It’s small, in a little burlap sack.  He hands it to Bucky.  “Just in case your dad makes good on his threat.”

Bucky takes the tiny bag and undoes the little ties.  Out falls a tiny pewter soldier.  At first he’s confused, not recognizing what it is or where Steve got something so nice.  But then he remembers.  He lost the others ages ago, and there have been Christmases since with other toys, better toys, but Steve…  Steve kept this one, the one _Bucky_ gave him, safe.  It’s perfect, still in pristine condition, as shiny and clean as it was the day Bucky got the set.  He holds it in his hand, gawking a little at it, before turning to Steve.

Steve grins mischievously, flushing a little with pride.  “At least now you got something.”

Bucky chuckles, closing his hand around the little toy soldier.  “Yeah.”

“You’re a jerk.  Merry Christmas.”

Bucky has to push him away and look out at the snow again to hide the tears in his eyes.  “Merry Christmas, too, you punk.”


	3. 1932

It’s Christmas, 1932.

Christmas Eve, to be exact, and everyone’s putting on a brave front.  Their new place isn’t nearly so nice as the last.  They’ve only recently moved in.  It’s thanks to Steve’s mother and her good relationship with the owner of the Rogers’ tenement building that the Barnes family isn’t out on the street.  Pop lost his job a few months back when the bad economy finally hit the factory, and since then, things have degraded quickly. He’s trying hard to find something else, trying _really_ hard, but there’s nothing to find.  There’s no work, nothing beyond odd jobs here and there, and suddenly everything that was so perfect and untouchable, like their nice apartment and all their things, is gone.

They’re trying to make light of it, but Bucky’s too old not to see through the fake smiles and false cheer.  He’s fifteen now, old enough to notice, to care, to understand that without a steady income, things fall apart and that means more than just not getting a lot of gifts for Christmas.  It means moving to a cheaper place, scrounging for food, _struggling._   Bucky’s never struggled in his life, not really.  Things have always come easy to him.  His ma tells him he’s a looker and a charmer, and he’s always gotten good marks in school and excelled at everything he’s tried.  This…

He can’t control this.

The only good thing about their much smaller, darker tenement is that they’re very close to Steve and his mother now.  Neither of their mothers liked him having to walk the streets at night in winter, not with his asthma on the upswing again.  This way he just has to go up a couple flights of stairs (and sometimes even that feels like too much).  Steve’s over now, spending the night (he’s been doing that a lot since the move).  Bucky doesn’t have his own room here.  He sleeps in the parlor on the couch, has been the last few weeks, and it’s really taken some getting used to.  His sisters are all sharing the second bedroom (which is hardly more than a tiny box), and his folks have the bigger room.  Everything being so much smaller isn’t pleasant.

It hangs over everyone, just how suddenly things have changed.  The Christmas traditions they’ve all loved for years feel threatened by poverty, by wealth and prosperity up and vanishing.  It’s not just the Barnes family losing what they have.  It’s Steve and his mother losing this, too, the good meal and the comfort and the escape to a place where they could experience _more._   That’s gone.  Their security is gone.

Steve doesn’t seem to mind though.  He’s sleeping on the cushions on the floor next to the couch.  Despite how tight money is, Pop still bought a tree, and they still decorated it, but even that’s not as lush and pretty as it has been in years past.  Bucky’s staring at it from the couch, absently watching the old lights that could stand replacing and probably would have been updated had the money been there.  They’re still pretty if not a little dim and dull.  The apartment lights are off, and everyone’s supposed to be sleeping in hopes of Santa Claus coming.  Bucky’s long, long since stopped believing in Santa.  Steve and his sisters have, too, of course, all except Ellie who’s eight now and on the cusp of the magic of it all being stomped out by logic.  Bitterly he wonders how Ellie will feel tomorrow, waking up to a tree bereft of the gluttony of gifts it had under it every other year.  If she still buys into the idea of Santa, she won’t come dawn.

Steve’s breathing is a little strained.  It’s colder in this place, as cold as Steve’s apartment always is upstairs, and Steve’s on the floor, which is always chillier.  Bucky looks down to watch his friend shiver a little.  He’s got one of their thicker blankets at least, but it’s still not enough.  It hurts to think things may stay this way, that the depression’s not going to get better and nothing will ever be enough again.

“Al Rainey’s got some work for me.”  That’s Pop’s voice, and it’s coming from the kitchen.  In their old apartment, Bucky wouldn’t have been able to hear his parents talk through his door and the thicker walls.  Here the walls are as thin as paper, and there’s no door to muffle the sound.  Pop’s whispering, his thick timbre a low rumble, but in the heavy silence it may as well be thunder.  The interior windows from the kitchen to the parlor let in the faint golden glow of lamplight.  Bucky pretends to be asleep, ducking his face away so his folks can’t see him too well.

He can see them, though.  Pop’s slouched at the table, the table that’s a board over the bathtub.  He always thought that’s funny about Steve’s mother’s apartment, having the bathtub in the center of the kitchen, but now he sees it makes sense.  The tenement’s crowded, and this offers at least some privacy while putting the tub close to the source of the hot water.  At any rate, at the moment it’s a table, and Pop is sitting there, looking tired and defeated.  “It’s not much.  Just moving inventory down at the docks.”

“It’s something, though,” Ma answers.  Her skirt rustles as she comes to stand behind him, her hands, roughened from years of work, curling over the meat of Pop’s burly shoulders.  “We have to take what we can get.”

“Won’t be enough,” Pop answers, and the bitterness in his voice cuts.  Bucky cringes under his quilt.  “God Almighty, Winnie…  What’re we going to do?”

Ma doesn’t answer right away.  Bucky closes his eyes.  “We go to bed,” she finally says, her voice soft and firm despite the fear that’s been in her eyes since moving here.  She pulls Pop out of his chair.  Bucky watches them embrace and then shuffle out of the kitchen, Ma leaning onto Pop.  It hurts, seeing them slip into the shadows like that.

He rolls over, trying to find some comfort on the lumpy pillows he’s lying on since Steve’s got the firmer cushions for the floor, blinking against the uncomfortable stinging in his eyes.  He’s too old to cry, has been for a long time.  He never cried much to begin with because Pop says boys aren’t supposed to.  It’s weak, something to be ashamed of, and he wants to make Pop proud, so he doesn’t cry now.  He doesn’t, even though he’s afraid, like the world’s been pulled out from under him, like the future that was once solid and sure is turning out to be a mirage like the ones in the desert he’s read about.  He can’t cry even though it’s Christmas and there are no gifts under the tree, nothing beyond papers and promises.

Steve’s lived through this.  And Steve never cries, either, although he doesn’t have a father to remind him it’s not seemly for a boy to do it.  Bucky stares at his friend’s skinny body under the blanket, his knobby shoulders poking out of it, and wonders at that.  He’s never thought about it before, not really.  All the bad stuff that’s happened to Steve, all the times he’s been sick or beaten up or talked down to, the poor life he’s lived, _all_ of that and he _never_ cries.  Bucky wonders how he can manage it, and he can’t stop thinking about it, even as the building gets quieter and everything settles for the long Christmas Eve night.  “You awake, Steve?” he finally whispers.

Steve may have been sleeping, but somehow Bucky knows he wasn’t.  He grumbles something and pulls the blanket tighter around him.  “What?”

“You ever get scared?”

“Of what?”

“Of bein’ like this.”

“Of _what?_ ”

It feels like a mean thing to ask but he’s asking all the same.  “Of bein’ poor.”

That’s one of those unspoken things between them.  Sure, they’re as close as peas in a pod, _still_ attached at the hip, but Steve being poorer than him isn’t something they ever really acknowledge.  Same as Steve’s asthma and Steve’s scoliosis and Steve’s bad ear and bad immune system.  Those things are there, and they hurt, so it’s better not to talk about them.  Besides, Steve’s okay.  His mother doesn’t earn enough in wages for them to have more than they do, and a lot of her money gets sucked into Steve’s health problems, but they have enough to eat, enough to get new (used) clothes every once in a while, enough that Sarah bought Steve some new books for his birthday that year.  There are levels of poverty, and Steve’s been fairly steady at this one his whole life.  It’s tolerable for him.

For Bucky, it’s terrifying.  Steve rolls over and looks up at him, blue eyes bright in the darkness.  “No.”

Bucky sighs.  He wasn’t sure what he wanted to here, but it wasn’t that.  “Pop can’t find work.  They’re saying things aren’t gonna get better, the newspapers and such.  Might even get worse.  What if it does?  What if there aren’t any jobs?  What if–”

“You can’t ask that,” Steve whispers back.  He’s lying on his back now, looking up at the shadows overhead.  “It’ll drive you crazy.  Sure, I get scared sometimes, but you can’t worry about what ifs.  Things happen as they happen, and you just have to keep going.”

That makes sense for Steve.  And Bucky already knows it.  He’s _seen_ Steve do it, over and over again.  _Keep going._   No matter what life throws at him, Steve does that.  He doesn’t _let_ things bring him down, doesn’t let them defeat him.  He’s at more of a disadvantage than most, has more reason to quit than anyone Bucky’s ever known, but he doesn’t.  Bucky really admires that about him, but Heaven forbid he ever say that to Steve.  Steve’d never take the compliment.

Steve reaches up and grabs Bucky’s hand.  His fingers are like ice, but his smile is warm and sweet.  “It’s gonna be fine, Buck.  You make do.  Don’t need much to have a nice Christmas.  And you don’t need much to be happy.  We got each other, right?”

Bucky already _knows_ that, too, deep down inside.  That’s a staple of Father O’Malley’s sermon every Christmas mass.  _“Find joy in one another and the love of the Lord.”_ He stares at Steve’s face, white in the shadows, and feels the chill in his friend’s skin seep into his own.  Next thing he knows he’s sliding off the couch.  “Hey, you mook,” Steve grunts.  “What’re you doing?”

“You’re shivering,” Bucky says, but that’s only half of it.  Steve’s shivering, and Bucky’s cold, and he wants more than the lumpy pillows and a night spent worrying.  He pushes up close to Steve, wrapping his arm around him and tugging him near.  Steve protests stiffly a moment more but gives up the fight.  It’s not like this is the first time they’ve huddled together or slept like this because it’s cold.  A couple times when Bucky stayed at Steve’s apartment.  On the playground now and again when it’s been bitter, bitter cold.  Once or twice waiting for the subway.  Bucky’s bigger, and it doesn’t take much at all to get Steve wrapped up against him for warmth.

This isn’t that simple, though, and they both realize it.  This is _comfort_.  It’s a little awkward, because this is another thing Pop says boys don’t do.  But Bucky likes it.  He pulls all their quilts up around them to trap the heat in, closes his eyes, and snuggles closer.  The silence comes back.  Now it’s not so distressing.  It goes on for a bit like this, neither of them sleeping.  Bucky’s happy for the heat coming back to Steve’s skin, even though Steve’s bony back is right flush to his chest.  He can almost feel Steve’s heartbeat.

“I know things are tough now,” Steve finally whispers, turning around a little in Bucky’s arms.  His face isn’t so white anymore, lips not quite as close to blue.  His eyes are still brilliant.  “But I got you a little somethin’ anyway.”

Bucky doesn’t want to hear that.  “I didn’t get you anything.”

“Well, it’s nothing special.”

“Don’t matter, Steve.  Come on.”

Steve grins.  He leans up so he can reach into his pocket of his old pajama pants.  He pulls something out.  “Should probably give it to you now so Becca and Mary and Ellie don’t get jealous.”  Steve offers his hand to Bucky.

“What are you on about…  Oh.”  It’s the little toy soldier.  Again.  Ever since the one Christmas where Bucky broke his leg, this has turned into a joke between them, passing the soldier back and forth.  Bucky had it in his room in their old apartment a whole year before gifting it back to Steve, who kept it by his bed the next year before sneaking it back into Bucky’s possession, and so on and so on.  It’s a gag, something stupid and silly, but it’s not, too, because it’s started to mean something more.  This is the soldier Bucky gave Steve when he had nothing, the one Steve gave back when Bucky needed it.  On and on like this, usually for fun, coupled with ribbing and banter about the little guy “protecting” the recipient for the year, about one of them finally losing the dumb thing or throwing it out since they are way too old to play with toys like this.  Somehow, though, the soldier always shows up at Christmas, ready to be passed from Steve to Bucky or Bucky to Steve.

With everything that went on the last few months, Bucky completely forgot about it.  It was probably a good thing Steve had it this previous year with all the upheaval.  It would have been lost for sure otherwise.  The relief he feels at the fact that it’s there, not nearly so pristine as it used to be, but _there_ in Steve’s hand…

Steve grins.  “Figure we can share it this year.”

Suddenly everything doesn’t seem so bad anymore.  No matter what, losing everything his family had, everything changing, the world being ripped out from under him and the future clouding up into this uncertain threat…  Steve still has that stupid little toy soldier.

Bucky’s grinning back.  Lightly he socks Steve in the arm, and Steve punches him back in the shoulder, and then they’re laughing and horsing around like a couple of little boys in the parlor, like they did when they were smaller.  Bucky gets Steve pinned, and Steve’s squirming and shoving at him, and they’re each giggling and scrambling for the toy soldier. 

“Boys!” Ma calls, her voice booming and shaking the tiny apartment.  Big or small, thick or thin, walls are no match for Winifred Barnes’ yelling.  “Go to sleep!”

They stop.  Steve’s still pinned under him, flushed and giddy with a big, dopey smile on his face.  Bucky is still, staring down on him, the darkness thick around them save for the lights of the Christmas tree, and Steve looks…

_Beautiful._

Steve frowns.  “Buck?”

“What?”

“Off?”

“Oh.”  Bucky clambers off of him, burning hot with a blush he hopes Steve won’t see.  Everything closes in tightly around him, the awkward quiet, the way he’s confused by how wrong but exciting that was.  They haven’t rough housed like that in a while, few years at least since they left the scrappy, overly energized play of young boys behind, and he can’t remember it ever feeling like this before.  There’s a tickle in his belly.  His heart feels like it’s skipping beats.  He’s uncomfortable, in more ways than one.

Steve doesn’t seem to notice, though.  If he does, he doesn’t say anything or act like it.  “If you wanted it so bad you just coulda asked,” he huffs with that stupid smile still plastered all over his face.  He elbows Bucky in the belly.  “Jerk.”  He gives Bucky the soldier.

Bucky takes it, but he’s not so interested in it anymore.  He’s staring at Steve, watching as the other boy watches him, and that uncomfortable feeling persists, curling his stomach, tingling across his nerves.  It feels like something’s different, like _everything’s_ different, but nothing is at all.

Steve nods to himself more than anything, pleased, grinning still like the sun, and he flops back down onto his side.  He pulls their little nest of warm blankets back up around him.  “Coming?” he asks, holding the quilts up for Bucky to take his place again.

Finally Bucky shakes himself free.  “Yeah,” he breathes.  He lays back down, but he doesn’t pull Steve quite so close again, doesn’t wrap his arm around him.

Steve doesn’t seem to care about the distance Bucky’s trying to maintain, tucking them both in and snuggling against him all the same.  “Night, Buck.”

He closes his fingers around the little toy soldier and squeezes it hard.  “G’night, Stevie.”


	4. 1934

It’s Christmas, 1934.

Bucky’s seventeen.  He’ll be eighteen in March.  He graduates high school next year, in less than six months.  It feels like the end of days is looming.  That’s overly dramatic, stupid really, but he can’t help it.  A proverbial storm’s been brewing in their family for weeks, _months,_ and it’s coming to a head _today_ of all days.  On Christmas.  Right in front of Steve.

Not that Steve isn’t aware of what’s been going on.  This has been building for a while, simmering, _festering_ like an untreated wound, so he knows.  Bucky’s complained about the tension between him and Pop enough times.  And he and Steve are closer than they ever have been.  That doesn’t seem possible (and maybe it shouldn’t be), but they are.  Their worlds are narrowing down to each other.  It’s not something that happened over night, and it’s not something either of them ever planned, but it happened all the same.  Years of being _Bucky and Steve_ has culminated into this, into the fact that Bucky goes out with other friends, with girls, and has a good time, but it never means much, never sticks with him.  It’s led to the fact that Steve has no friends outside of Bucky, that there’s no one who’s ever looked at him twice or thought he’s worth anything.  No dame gives him the time of day.  So _Steve and Bucky_ is becoming even more than what it was, and it was already a big deal.  One hardly does anything without the other.

Except Steve’s only sixteen.  He doesn’t graduate high school for another year and a half, and that’s if he doesn’t have another bad season of the flu or worse that sets him back.  Bucky leaving school is a huge problem, because school has always bound them together.  They’ve stuck with one another through school, worked through it, shared it between them.  Bucky’s been Steve’s guardian, his friend when no one else would be, his best mate.  Bucky brought him his work and helped him stay on top of his studies when he’s been ill.  And, in turn, Steve’s reminded Bucky about what it means to be a good person, to stay away from the riff-raff and keep working hard.  They’ve helped each other, stood by each other through thick and thin.  They’ve been _together_.  _Bucky and Steve.  Steve and Bucky._

Now Bucky’s leaving.  It’s the question of how far that has caused this rift between him and his parents, more specifically his pop.  He’s worked hard these last few years, both as a student and down at the docks with his father.  His marks in all his studies are exceptional.  On top of that, he’s a stellar athlete.  He’s done amazingly well for himself physically and academically.  Therefore, he has a chance (a _good_ chance) to continue with his education, and not community college or City College.  A real university.

Needless to say, he’s not too keen on that.  He should be.  He’s insane _not_ to be.  But he’s not, not if it means leaving Steve behind.

So here they are, having the fight on Christmas Eve.  Bucky wants to yell or run or try to diffuse the situation, but he can’t.  He just sits there and takes it.  “You’re throwin’ your damn life away,” Pop snaps again.  He’s said that a few times now, and Bucky winces with every single one.  “You see that, don’t you?  Throwing it all away!”  They’re in the parlor where the tree’s been set up.  Ma’s not doing much to cool Pop’s ire.  Bucky knows she agrees with him.  Steve at least rounded Becca, Mary, and Ellie up so they won’t see the argument going on, and they’re in the girls’ room.  Not that it matters.  They’ll hear it all the same.  Pop’s not exactly quiet when he gets upset.

And he’s upset now.  Eyes flashing, breathing charged, voice booming.  Their nice Christmas Eve’s been bowled over by this explosion, and there’s no getting the good mood back.  “Did you think I wouldn’t find out you’re asking around for work?”

Apparently one of Pop’s friends down at the docks told him Bucky was around, inquiring about jobs with longer hours and better wages come the summer.  He’s already doing work there as he can there, after school most days a week.  His parents don’t like that, and he knows why.  It takes time away from studying.  “Didn’t think you’d be so upset about it,” Bucky admits.  He’s sitting on the couch, hands in his lap, eyes respectfully lowered.

It’s not doing much to appease Pop.  He’s fuming.  “You didn’t think…  I guess that’s the problem, isn’t it?  You _don’t_ think.”

Bucky’s ears burn.  “Pop–”

“Why else would we be pushing you to do well in school?  To study as hard as you can and read _everything_ you can find and learn your numbers and how to write well?”  Bucky tries to sink further into the couch.  “It’s not so you can waste yourself laboring like another damn good-for-nothing _nobody_.”

“George,” Ma finally says, setting her arm on Pop’s arm. 

Pop’s not dissuaded.  “We came to the city so that you could have more, have a better life.  You have a real chance of getting that, James, but that’s not going to happen if you stay here.  There’s _nothing_ for you here.  You need to go to a university so you can make something more of yourself.”

“Why can’t I do that here?” Bucky asks.  It hurts, hearing his father talk say that, that nothing in Brooklyn, nothing he has, is worth anything.  His heart fills in what his mind won’t.  _That Steve’s not worth anything._   There’s no way Steve’s going to a university.  He’s smart, and he could do well there, but his mother will never be able to afford it.  As it stands, Steve’s future is really uncertain.  It always has been.  His financial status aside, his health is a serious limiting factor.  Bucky’s not going to roll over and show his belly, though.  “You’ve always earned a good wage.  Why can’t I do that?”

“It’s not a good wage,” Pop retorts.  “It’s not good enough.  There’s no security in it.  There’s no _honor_ in it.”

“That’s not true–”

“Yes, it is!  Don’t you tell me what I know about my life, son.  Don’t you dare.”  Pop’s eyes are bright with anger.  “I am what I am.  _You_ are more.  Your mother and I have done _everything_ we’ve done so that you could rise above this, so you wouldn’t suffer what we just suffered being destitute.  We’ve scrounged and saved every penny we can for this, for _you_ to go and make something of yourself, something _more_.”

It’s impossible not to shrink further.  When Pop puts it like that, it’s brutal, as if _not_ going onto a university and becoming something other than a skilled laborer, like a doctor or a lawyer or _anything_ that’s a professional career – is a failure.  He doesn’t want to disappoint them, but his heart’s not in any of this, not leaving and studying more and changing his life.

His heart’s…  He still can’t admit it to himself, won’t _let_ himself see it.  Can’t let anyone see it.

_It’s wrong._

Going away is the best way to put a stop to what he’s feeling.  There are so many reasons to do what they want, to go out into the world and learn and spread his wings and _become_ something more than a foreman’s son, than a dockworker’s son.  There are so many reasons, not the least of which being that what he wants here is impossible.

But he can’t let that go.  So he sits on the couch, weathering his father’s rage, trying hard not to crack under it.  Steve always tells him he’s made for more, that he’s too good to be wasted on the likes of him.  Steve has no idea how he feels, but it doesn’t matter.  Staying put because your “friend” can’t leave is pathetic and illogical, and there’s no way to explain it.  He can’t.  Therefore, he has to keep silent as Pop rages.  There is no other choice.

Thankfully, Pop doesn’t rage too much longer.  Pop and he don’t always see eye to eye; as Bucky’s gotten older and Pop’s become bitterer and more disenfranchised with the family’s situation, they butt heads quite a bit.  Bucky knows Pop loves him, though.  As stubborn as they both are, it’s never said, never admitted.  Still, it comes through, in moments like this.  It shows because Pop leans back, loosens up his confrontational stance, stops breathing so heatedly and glaring so angrily.  Bucky chances looking up at him to find his eyes softening and his frown disappearing a little.  For one horrific second, he wonders if his parents _know._ If they’ve figured it out.  He’s terrified of that, but he _wants_ it, too, because maybe they’d understand.  He can’t hope for that, knows it’s impossible, but maybe they’d _accept it…_  

“No more,” Pop warns.  His jaw is still clenched a bit, but his voice is lower, more level.  He raises a thick forefinger.  “Not a word of it.  You’re going to go onto a better education, no matter what.  You’re not staying here.  You’re not throwing away the promise of something better, not for _anything_ or _anyone,_ and that’s that.  No arguing.  No looking for work.  Do you understand?  _You’re going._ ”

Bucky’s eyes burn.  Ma sighs softly.  “George,” she warns again.

Pop stares a moment more.  Bucky can’t bring himself to keep looking at him.  He’s reeling with this, with how quickly this nice family evening degraded, with how transparent and small he feels.  The silence persists a moment more, and Bucky’s practically crawling out of his skin.  He wants to ask – _what’s so wrong with this life?  Living here?  Staying here?  Staying close to Steve and earning an honest wage and being who I want to be.  Why can’t I be who I am?_ – but he doesn’t dare.  Finally Pop takes Bucky’s silence for submission and gives up the fight, clearly believing it won by him.  He stalks away.

Bucky sits on the couch, biting the inside of his lower lip hard enough that the bitter tang of blood assails his tongue.  It hurts, but not as much as the knot inside his chest.  That knot makes it feel like he’s dying.

Ma watches him sympathetically for another long, silent moment.  Bucky lets go of a long breath and looks up hesitantly, catching her eyes.  He can’t read her face.  Ma’s always been one to let how she’s feeling be known, and now he can’t figure it out.  Maybe that’s his own fear clouding the situation.  She’s sad, for sure, sad and worried.  Angry that he’s going against their wishes.  Afraid maybe?  Afraid of ruining the holiday or further straining his already strained relationship with Pop.  Or afraid of what she’s figured out and what it means.  That scares Bucky, too, and any hope that they could understand fizzles out like a flame with no fuel.  A candle’s depleted wick.

She grasps his shoulder all the same.  “Go wash up for dinner and get your sisters.”  She holds his gaze a moment more, manages her motherly smile that he knows so well.  The comforting one she always has when things go wrong, when Steve takes ill or gets himself beaten up worse than normal and Bucky’s scared.  Then she shuffles off to the kitchen.

It takes a bit more for Bucky to get up finally and do as she asks.  He’s like a shadow, darting through their apartment to the girls’ room.  He knocks on the door, and Steve’s the one who lets him in.  Steve who practically glows golden with the lamplight behind him.  Steve with his blond hair and bright blue eyes and plush lips and perpetually scraped up knuckles.  He frowns.  Yeah, there’s no way he didn’t hear every word of the fight.  “Buck…”

“Stevie,” Bucky greets, and he tries for a smile but he really wants to scream or cry.  He doesn’t know which.

Steve shakes his head.  “Your dad’s real mad.”

That makes Bucky mad, too.  His sisters are staring, Becca in concern and Mary in anger (probably that Christmas is being ruined because of him or just because of him in general – the two of them go together like oil and water) and Ellie in confusion.  “Go get washed up for dinner,” he barks, sterner than he needs to.

Mary scowls.  “You’re always causin’ trouble!”

“Just go!”

They do but not without lasting looks.  Bucky’s trying to ignore them as they shove past him, and when he turns back to Steve, Steve’s got his coat on.  Cold terror washes over him in an awful wave.  “Wait.  What’re you…  You ain’t leaving.”

Steve manages a weak smile all his own.  There’s worry in his eyes, too.  And fear.  And disappointment.  Ma and Pop have always been happy to have Steve so tightly knit into their lives, from that first Christmas they invited the Rogers family over until now.  But there’s only so much the both of them – _Steve and Bucky_ – can do to delude themselves.  Pop doesn’t like the idea of Bucky having so few friends outside of Steve, of Bucky taking care of Steve.  He never has.  Ma’s more comfortable with it, but that was before Bucky’s friendship with Steve caused _this._

And this isn’t something they can handle, not with Bucky’s future in the balance.  Not with his father demanding and threatening.  Steve doesn’t know the truth – if he did, he’d _run_ from Bucky and never look back – but he knows enough to see he’s complicating the situation.

So he’s doing what he always does: sacrificing himself to help someone else.  “I shouldn’t stay right now,” he says softly but evenly.

That _hurts._   It hurts so goddamn much that Bucky can hardly stand it.  “You can’t go,” he says, lost in shock and pain and fear.

Steve buttons his coat up.  “Your family should be alone.”

“Steve, you _are_ family!  Every Christmas we’ve–”

Again Steve flashes his fake smile.  Bucky learned a long time ago how to tell it apart from all his real smiles.  This one never reaches his eyes.  “It ain’t right, Buck.  Not now.  Besides, Mom’ll be home in a couple hours.”

That’s a damn excuse.  “She knows you’re staying here!” Bucky gasps through clenched teeth, shaking in frustration.  “She knows you’re here!  She’s coming tomorrow.  We’re having Christmas with the two of you, like we do every year, Stevie, _every year_ , so you can’t…”  He can’t finish.

Steve frowns.  “I should go,” is all he says again.  He offers the pathetic smile one last time like some sort of consolation prize.  “We’ll see each other later, huh?”  That curl of his lips turns more pained.  “Merry Christmas.”  He rushes by, like he if doesn’t start moving _right now,_ he’ll lose his nerve.  For a second, Bucky catches his eyes, and he can _swear_ there’s a glistening twinkle in them.  Tears, maybe.  He can’t be sure, because Steve’s gone like he was never there at all.

Bucky’s left alone, shaking, aching.  His heart feels like it’s been ripped open, torn in half.  His eyes sting and he’s struggling to hold his temper in check.  Christmas is ruined now for sure, no matter how nice it may be.  It’s _ruined._

And that damn toy soldier is burning a hole in his pocket.  He meant to give it back to Steve.  It’s _his turn_ to give it back to Steve.  Now he can’t.


	5. 1936

It’s Christmas, 1936.

Sarah Rogers died two months ago.  She was never in the greatest health, though she always hid it for Steve’s sake.  Bucky noticed, though, particularly in the last couple years how much worse she was getting.  He thinks Steve noticed too, but Steve never said anything about it.  Another one of those things they didn’t acknowledge, like dismissing the problem could make it go away.

Well, it’s over now.  Working in a TB ward finally caught up with her.  She took sick right after Steve’s eighteenth birthday, hung on for a few months in a slow, torturous decline, before blessedly passing away in October.  Bucky watched it happen from afar, like a damn spectator in a sense, because he and Steve weren’t seeing each other all the time anymore.  Bucky’s father is still all over him about living up to his potential and going onto better things.  He’s pushing hard, and Bucky’s trying to meet his expectations as much as he can.  He’s been studying at Brooklyn College; it’s a compromise between Pop’s desire to have him get more education and his fervent wish to stay near home.  It helps that for all his parents’ efforts, they simply don’t have the money to send him somewhere more prestigious.  At the time it was difficult to act upset about that when he wasn’t.

Still, even though he’s close to home, he’s been staying away from Steve a bit, trying not to rile his father, trying to pretend he’s happy with this, and he is content enough; it’s not like he hates school, but things always feels incomplete to him, like he can’t commit.  That stems from his blatant inability to put his own feelings to rest.  He’s trying even harder to do that because those feelings scare him more and more.  His brain can’t make peace with his heart, not in the slightest, so it’s easier to ignore everything, to pretend he and Steve are old school buddies and nothing more.  That everything is as simple now as it was when they were kids, running through the streets, playing stickball or make believing they were soldiers, laughing without a care in the world.  Huddling close to Steve or throwing his arm around Steve’s shoulders or doing any one of a million things he used to do with Steve that meant nothing beyond brotherly affection.  When he’s honest with himself, he has to admit that maybe it _never_ meant that, that even back then, back when they were little boys with nothing more important than playing after school together and reading science fiction serials by lamplight in Bucky’s room or listening to their favorite radio programs shoulder to shoulder…  Even back then, he knew.

It’s not right.  It’s not natural.  It’s not healthy.  It confuses the hell out of him, too, because he _knows_ he likes girls.  He’s dated them, danced with them, touched them and kissed them and enjoyed every moment.  He likes them a whole lot.

But he loves Steve.  He knew then, and he knows now.  It’s all he knows for sure.

At any rate, he’s keeping his distance, which isn’t to say he’s not seeing Steve at all.  He does.  He visits him almost every day after Steve’s back from his job at the grocer’s.  It’s late when Bucky gets there, and Steve’s exhausted.  He can see that.  Although his fatigue is not gone, it’s better now than it was when his mother was sick.  Steve worked so hard to keep money coming in, to keep her alive when she could hardly breathe, when the fever consumed her.  And the stubborn asshole refused help.  He knew as much as Bucky did that it was a lost cause, and he said the same thing every night back then during those few months that his mother languished and withered.  _“It ain’t worth it, Buck.  You need your money.  You got your own life, and I got mine, and I can get by on my own.”_

He wasn’t even there the night Steve’s mother died, Steve’s sweet mother who always had a smile for him and who appreciated so much that he was Steve’s friend.  Once Sarah made him promise to look after Steve.  That was early on in their friendship, when Steve was nine or ten and getting into fights left and right.  They were fights that needed to be fought, mind you, but it seemed like Steve wasn’t just starting something because of that.  He was doing it recklessly, like he needed to prove he could, that he could stand up for himself and _do_ what he believed was right.  After Bucky dragged him home one day, the both of them sporting an array of bloody bruises, Steve’s mother patched them up and gave Steve a stern talking-to.  Then after Steve stalked away with tears in his eyes, she turned to Bucky, tears in her eyes, too, and made him promise.  _“He needs you, James.  You’re all he has.  Please don’t leave him.  Please protect him.”_ He promised without a second thought.

He’s failing hard in keeping that promise.  Steve watched Sarah pass away by himself.  Bucky didn’t find out it happened at all until the next day, until he stopped by late the following night on his way home to find Steve alone, staring blankly at his mother’s bed.  He wasn’t crying.  Bucky hasn’t seen him cry in years, and even then it was always a few wayward tears.  It killed him inside to find Steve like that, lost and hurting and broken in a way the bullies’ punches and kicks never managed.  The day they buried Sarah, Steve didn’t cry either.  That haunted glaze persisted, and in the back of his mind, as Bucky walked Steve back up to his tenement after the funeral, that promise kept echoing in the back of his head.  _“I’ll take care of him, Mrs. Rogers.  Don’t you worry about that.”_

That day Bucky had on his nicest gray suit.  Steve wasn’t dressed in anything more than his normal clothes, a brown tie and a brown shirt and a nicer pair of slacks and a gray jacket to ward off the autumn chill.  He looked so downtrodden.  Bucky couldn’t stand to see him that way, downtrodden and so defeated as if even though he _knew_ there was no saving his mother, he still felt like he gave up the fight.  So as Steve dazedly looked for his key, the words came out.  He tried to make light of it, finding the spare key under the brick there, joking about how them sharing a place would be like when they were kids even though _nothing_ is like when they were kids.  Couch cushions on the floor and taking out the trash and he was trying not to seem so desperate because he _wants_ Steve and he _needs_ to know Steve is okay–

Steve’s answer was the same as it always is.  _“Thank you, Buck, but I can get by on my own.”_

It was so hard to act he didn’t feel the way he did, to offer up a promise about sticking around to the end of the line without saying what he really needed to.  It was so hard to just grab Steve’s shoulder – another brotherly show of affection that’s a lie – and leave it at that.  And it was nearly impossible to leave Steve there alone.

That was two months ago.  And, yes, he’s seeing Steve all the time, but it’s short and unfulfilling and not the same.  Sarah is gone (and Bucky wonders all the time if _she_ knew, and he thinks she must have, but love was love to her, and anyone who loves her son was unquestioningly worthy of her love in return), and Bucky’s folks, while sympathetic of course, are silently relieved Bucky’s studying rather than spending time with Steve, just as they have been the last couple years.  That frustration that’s been simmering beneath the surface is driving Bucky mad.

It’s Becca who makes him see reason.  Of all his sisters, she’s the one who gets him the best.  She doesn’t like that Steve’s gone, either.  They both graduated together last spring, and even though it was a joyous occasion (the last time, Bucky thinks, he saw Steve’s mother happy and hale), Becca noticed Bucky’s frustration.  “He’s all alone,” she says as they walk home together from a late lunch at the automat on Christmas Eve.  “Don’t you think you should go see him?”

He should.  He wants to desperately.  “Pop’ll have my ears,” he grumbles, stuffing his cold hands into his coat pocket.

Becca shakes her head.  She’s grown into a beautiful young woman, and Bucky should be spending more time keeping suitors away from her.  “He doesn’t hate you being home, you know.  And he doesn’t hate Steve.”

“I know.”  In all honesty, and no matter how bitter he is, he does.

“Go invite Steve to Christmas dinner tonight,” she says, and there’s a wistful note in her voice.  “He can spend the night.  Just like old times.”

That’s so tempting.  It really is, even though Bucky’s supposed to be leaving childish things and childhood friends behind.  Neither Ma nor Pop said anything about Steve being welcome for Christmas, though they didn’t expressly say he wasn’t, either.  His mother cried – really cried, which she never does – for weeks after Steve’s mother died.  She hasn’t been the same, quiet and forlorn with her loud voice and opinions dampened, and it’s rare something affects her like that.  Maybe…  Maybe it’ll be good to have Steve over, to share Christmas with him and have him there with Ma, too.  Just like old times.  Traditions.  She always loves that.

“You’re not the only one who misses him.”  Bucky turns to Becca’s smile.  For an irrational, stupid split second, he can’t help but wonder if she’s sweet on Steve, and this jealousy twists up his gut.  But she’s not.  Her eyes open and innocently loving, and right on the tails of his stupid jealousy comes a stab of fear he always feels when he wonders if someone _knows_.  It’s this awful paranoia he can’t ever quiet or shake anymore.

If she does know, she doesn’t care.  “Go see him tonight, Bucky.  Don’t let him be alone.”

That’s all the encouragement he needs.  He spends a little time that afternoon helping Ma around the apartment; she’s not as young as she used to be, and making dinner for their family on special occasions wears her now.  She also needs a package with a dress she tailored for old Mrs. Jameson delivered, and Bucky volunteers as an excuse to get out.  Ma immediately agrees because the sun’s down already and the weather’s rotten.  It’s a damp and miserably cold, drizzling icy rain.  A gray and dreary Christmas.  He hurries across the street with his parcel, drops it into Mrs. Jameson’s weathered hands, and lets her ask and prod and generally be a nuisance about him finding a girl and settling down.  Then he races back and goes to Steve’s apartment.

They’re not in the same building anymore.  Pop got lucky with good work, a new textile mill that needed a skilled foreman, so the Barnes family has relocated again to a better tenement this year.  Steve’s in the same place he always has been, in that tiny apartment that always smells just a little bit like sickness.  If that’s not telling, Bucky doesn’t know what is.  His family is bouncing back from the economic depression and has a car now and a better place and money to send him to school while Steve has stayed right where he is, poor and managing with no hope in sight for all his life.  Just thinking about it makes Bucky feel terrible.

And it makes him feel terrible that he knocks on Steve’s door, shrinking into himself in shame like he’s a criminal or something, like someone may be watching him do something wrong.  That doesn’t stop him, though, not from knocking and knocking more when Steve doesn’t answer.  Fear overwhelms the shame.  He hasn’t seen Steve in a few days.  All sorts of awful thoughts rush through his head, Steve suffering alone, Steve sick or hurt somewhere.  Steve _gone_.  He’s rapidly crouching and getting the spare key from beneath the brick and turning around to jab it into the lock.  The door opens easily, and he goes inside.

The apartment’s dark.  Silent.  The same as it always is, with the musty smell and ratty furnishings.  There’s less clutter, though, as Steve has packed away some of his mother’s things.  He’s been selling them, and that hurts, too, like his mother’s been reduced to something he needs to barter away to survive.  The little kitchen is closest to the door and utterly empty.  “Steve?” Bucky asks.  He steps further inside, the old floor creaking under his feet.  Out of habit he avoids the noisy spots; he knows where they are from a lot of nights and early mornings sneaking around the apartment to steal a couple cookies when Steve’s mother was sleeping.  “Steve?  You here?”

He’s not.  The apartment’s small enough that it takes all of a few seconds to check it over completely.  Bucky’s heart is absolutely pounding in fear now.  _Where is he?_   He can hardly think he’s so shaken.  His skin goes hot with uncomfortable sweat under his coat, and he’s obsessively looking around again even though it’s a waste of time.  Steve isn’t here.  Those terrible fears stampede across his brain more and more until he’s sitting in the little chair in the kitchen.  Minutes slip away, an empty parade of them.  Bucky’s jittering like crazy but rooted in his spot, frozen like the chill in the air has seeped into his lungs and skin and muscles and bones.  Like it’s in his heart and brain.  _Steve’s not here.  He’s out there somewhere.  Someone could be hurting him.  He could need me, and I’m not there.  Oh, God, let him be okay–_

Eventually the door opens.  Bucky jolts to his feet, heart straining in his chest.  Steve’s there.  _Steve’s here._ He’s pale and cold and shivering.  His skin is practically white, and his coat is soaked.  He seems a little surprised the door’s not locked and even more surprised Bucky’s in his apartment.  “Bucky?  What’re you–”

Anger turns hot inside him.  “What am I doing?  What the hell are _you_ doing?  Christ, you’re gonna kill yourself!”

Steve’s alarmed expression slips and slides right into a furious frown.  He stalks past Bucky, shoulders drawing up, trailing water.  He looks like a drowned cat.  “What do you want?”  The way he says that, stiffly and without any warmth or relief, hits hard.

Bucky stares at him.  “Where were you?”

“Does it matter?”  Bucky doesn’t look away, and Steve sighs at his stubbornness and takes his coat off.  He’s wet through and through.  “Walkin’.”

Bucky stares harder, like that can drive some sense into his friend _._   _“Walkin’?”_

Steve really is trying to kill himself.  He looks back defiantly, tense as a coiled spring, eyes flashing.  There’s no color in his face, and his shirt is sticking to his chest, so much that Bucky can see his ribs moving as he breathes.  He looks like he does when he’s getting himself into something, when he’s all fire and fight, and Bucky’s struck by the same thing he always is: Steve’s beautiful.  He always is, but like this it’s striking.  And that’s terrifying, too, both that he could think something like that of another man and that Steve is like this right now, so lost up in himself that he’s getting himself into something with the only person who’s ever stood at his side.  “No reason to be here.”

Bucky winces.  “Steve…”

It’s all coming to the surface, these last months of hardly seeing each other, of hardly sharing more than empty pleasantries.  Steve’s brittle, fracturing.  The walk in the rain…  Bucky can picture it, Steve’s eyes glazed with pain and grief he hasn’t let himself experience as he wanders, his tiny form hunched like it’s carrying the weight of the world.  All his assurances that he can handle this, that he doesn’t need help, that he can get by on his own…  _I should never have believed him._

Steve drops his gaze and goes over to his mother’s bed.  His long fingers seem numb, unable to handle the buttons of his shirt as he tries to get the sopping thing off.  Bucky averts his eyes but doesn’t go, and the minutes drag on and on uncomfortably.  After a bit, Steve sighs shortly.  “Did you want something, Barnes?”

 _Barnes._   Steve hasn’t called him by his last name in ages.  Steve’s _never_ been like this before.  “Jesus, Steve…”

“Aren’t you missing Christmas with your family?”  That comes out curt and worn thin.

“I wanted to ask you to come back with me.”

“Can’t,” Steve says, and off go his dripping shoes and socks.  He’s frail in the shadows, frail and fragile and almost ethereal he’s so white.  Angelic if not graceless as he stumbles and fights with his clothes like he does with any alleyway bully, all uncoordinated strength and determination.  “No place for me there.”

It hits Bucky like a punch to the belly, knocking the air right out of him.  “Bullshit.  You know that’s not true.”

“Don’t know much of anything anymore, ’cept that I’m alone,” Steve replies matter-of-factly.  “And it’s better this way.  Isn’t it?  Better for you going to school.  And I can handle myself.  I know you think I need you.”  Bucky’s watching how clumsy he is, and he wonders if it’s more than the nerve-numbing cold.  He wonders if Steve’s drunk or something.  He seems so broken open and unguarded, not like himself at all.  That’s Bucky’s fault.  They’ve both been suffering, only Bucky’s been too lost up in his own issues and insecurities to care enough to get his head out of his ass.  “You think I can’t do anything without you.  You think I’m some weak, helpless, pathetic…”  Steve shakes his head, standing half naked in the bedroom in only his trousers with his suspenders by his hips.  “I’m not.  I can do just fine on my own, even do Christmas by myself.  I’ll be fine.  You don’t gotta watch out for me.  Go home.  Go be with your family.  I don’t need anyone.”

“Steve,” Bucky whispers, horrified.  “Steve, come on.  You don’t need to be alone.  Come with me.  Just like old times.”

“No place for me there,” Steve says again, and it sounds so low Bucky can almost believe he means it, that this isn’t some senseless outpouring of self-pity brought on by months of repressed emotions.  Bucky winces as Steve sucks in a deep breath, like he’s trying to pull himself together and wrestle his erratic moods into submission.  He fishes around his mother’s drawers for a shirt.  “I’ll stay here.  I’m fine.”  He can’t seem to find one, and he turns around in frustration toward the laundry that hasn’t been washed.  “Go home.”

“Steve, please–”

_“Go home.”_

The finality of that is crushing.  What’d he expect?  _He’s_ been the one pushing Steve away again, the one leaving him to suffer through these first weeks after losing his mother alone.  He’s the one who was dumb enough to believe Steve’s lies, even _knowing_ they’re lies, because it’s more convenient that way and less likely to cause him pain.  He’s the selfish bastard who’s left his best friend – _the one he loves_ – to muddle through on his own in order to keep things simple.

So he has that coming.  He really does.

The silence that follows is deafening.  Crushing.  Bucky can’t think past it, can’t see through it, can’t bring himself to hope that tomorrow will be better.  _The end of days._   That’s still so goddamn dramatic, but it feels like it for all his heart is breaking.  Steve’s back is still to him, the sharp angles of his shoulder blades and the slight twist of his spine all too obvious.  Not being able to see his face – those bright blue eyes – is all the more torturous.  “It’s fine, Bucky,” he says.  His voice cracks.  “You got better things to do than take care of me.”

 _No._ But Bucky just swallows the knot in his throat and reaches into his pocket.  “I, uh…  I grabbed this for you…  Probably time I give it back.”  He sets the little toy soldier he took from his things before leaving his apartment on the little table by Steve’s mother’s bed.  It’s dull in the dim light, pointing as it’s always pointing.  It feels like it’s pointing at nothing now.  “Merry Christmas, Steve.”

He turns to go.

He doesn’t get far, almost to the door, before Steve’s racing after him.  He grabs Bucky’s arm, gasping a shaking breath, and for one heated, desperate moment, Bucky thinks he’s going to kiss him.  He doesn’t, though.  He just pulls Bucky closer, gazing at him with horrified, shame-filled, teary eyes, digging his blunt nails into Bucky’s wrist in little darts of pain.  “’m sorry,” he mumbles, shivering anew.  “Please don’t go!”

Bucky doesn’t go.  He wraps Steve up in his arms, buries the smaller man’s deep sob into his shoulder.  Steve wails a cry, and suddenly the cracks in his brittle exterior, the ones that seemed to have been growing the last few minutes…  They break wide, and all of the things he’s been denying and keeping inside him and burying for the sake of soldiering on break free.  Bucky wraps him up tight, enfolding him in his arms and pulling him as close as he can, squeezing as hard as he dares to show Steve he’s here.  “Not going anywhere,” he promises.

Steve’s skin is like ice and he’s shuddering wildly.  Tears flood from eyes that are squeezed shut, breaths rushing between parted lips, and he hangs onto Bucky like Bucky’s all he has.  There’s nothing else, nothing aside from Bucky.  “She’s gone,” he moans.  “She’s gone!”

Bucky closes his eyes.  “I know, pal.”

“Sorry.  I was bein’ stupid!  Don’t wanna be alone…”

“You’re not.  You hear me?  You’re not.”

“Please don’t leave me…  Please, please, _please…_ ”

“Not leaving you,” Bucky swears.  He lowers them both to the floor, bracing them against the door.  Then he shifts to open his coat, to get Steve as close to him as possible, to warm him and protect him and keep him near.  “Never gonna leave you.  We’re together, Steve.”

 _Until the end of the line._   That’s what he promised the day Steve buried his mother.  All of this he’s been doing, trying, ignoring, dismissing…  Convincing himself it’s not right, to feel the way he does.  He’s been lying to everyone, himself most of all.  He can’t anymore.  Maybe he’s not ready to tell Steve the truth, but he’s ready to admit it to himself anyway.  He’s here, and he can’t go.  Not ever.

He lets Steve cry, dropping a kiss or two into Steve’s soft hair.  Steve’s never done this, never let go like this, and Bucky’ll be damned if he lets Steve feel anything less than absolutely safe and entitled.  He rubs a hand up and down Steve’s back, feels each knob of his spine.  The way his breath hitches makes Bucky worry about his asthma, that the cold and the stress is triggering something worse, but Steve keeps his breathing steady enough with Bucky’s guiding example and soft encouragement.  Eventually Steve’s sobs turn to wearied weeping, and that becomes hiccoughs and shaky sighs as he finally wears himself out.  “You’re alright,” Bucky kept murmuring.  “You’re alright.  She wouldn’t want you out in the rain, drowning yourself and getting yourself sick.  And she wouldn’t want you struggling alone just to prove you can take care of yourself.  I know you can.  She knew it, too.  Ain’t no sense in this, Stevie, specially not on Christmas.  Your ma loved Christmas.”

Steve gives a gusty, shivery laugh, pressing his face closer into the warmth of Bucky’s neck.  “Yeah, she did.”

They sit there a moment longer until Bucky’s back’s starting to hurt and Steve’s drifting off to an exhausted slumber.  Bucky helps him stand, helps him walk to his mother’s bed.  Steve shakes his head when he sees it, eyes half-lidded and voice slurred.  “Haven’t been…”

“I know,” Bucky says, and he figured as much.  It’s obvious Steve hasn’t slept there, that he’s still using the small, lumpy cot in the little closet of a space across the way.  The bed’s made up so perfectly, and Steve’s mother’s things are still there, not disturbingly so, but her rosary is on the little table by the bed and Steve’s father’s photograph (the only one they have) is framed there as well.  Her bible and her medical diaries and books.  Bucky’s heart aches just seeing it all.  He breathes a sigh.  “But a bed’s a bed.  She’d want you to have everything you need.  She always made sure of it.”

Steve frowns, eyes welling anew, but he doesn’t argue.  He’s too spent.  Bucky helps him down into the bed and pulls the blankets up over him.  These are better, thicker, but Steve’s still shivering.  “You’re missing your Christmas,” Steve whispers, his red, watery eyes huge in the shadows.  “It’s ruined.”

“You letting me take care of you is all the gift I need.”  Steve flushes, blinking languidly.  It’s hard not to kiss him like this, with him so pliant and relaxed in front of him.  Bucky doesn’t, though.  He just brushes back Steve’s bangs from his forehead.

Steve watches him worriedly.  “Then you’re not leavin’?” he whispers.

“Nah.  Never.”

“Do you…  Would you…”

Even though Steve’s right (he’s going to miss Christmas, and his parents will be angry, and his sisters will be disappointed, and everything will get more complicated and difficult), Bucky doesn’t hesitate.  He takes off his coat, kicks off his shoes, crawls into the bed.  Gets under the blankets and draws them up to trap the heat of their bodies close.  Pulls Steve against him, spooning him the way they always do when they slept curled up together for warmth.  Wraps an arm around him, keeping him close, feeling him breathe, watching him as he drifts off to a peaceful sleep.  Breathes deeply of Steve and sates senses that have been longing for months.  Stares at the toy soldier that’s right by Sarah’s rosary and Joseph Rogers’ picture.  It’s almost as if the little guy’s standing guard over them.  In a way, Bucky thinks, he always has.


	6. 1937

It’s Christmas, 1937.

It’s a good one.  A _great_ one.  It’s simple, quiet, without flair or extravagance.  And it’s just the two of them, so in some ways, it’s the best they’ve ever had.

Their new apartment isn’t all that big, just moderately larger than Steve’s old one.  The neighborhood’s only marginally better.  The one bedroom is small, with Bucky’s bed on one side closest to the window and Steve’s on the other and barely a few feet between them.  They could have turned the parlor into another place to sleep, but they kept it as, took the old couch from the Rogers’ place and whatever other furniture they could find to make it into an area to relax.  The kitchen between the parlor and the bedroom is tiny, too, hardly big enough for the two of them to work together in it.  The heat doesn’t always work right in the winter, and it bakes in the summer.  They make do, though.  It’s enough.

 _No great shakes._   It’s all they need in every way that matters.

The little toy soldier’s found a new home on the windowsill next to the tree, pointing boldly into the apartment.  Bucky brought the tree home last week, and it’s been shedding pine needles constantly no matter how often they keep it watered.  They don’t have much in terms of ornaments and decorations, just what Steve’s mother had, and he doesn’t feel entirely okay with putting all of them up.  Bucky can appreciate that; Steve’s been just a bit sadder since his mother passed away, since Bucky’s family distanced themselves from them.  Melancholy is a good word for it, not one that’s dragging him down or anything, but a forlorn quietness that clings to him, particularly when he thinks Bucky’s not looking.  At any rate, everything they earn goes into the necessities: rent, food on the table, sturdy clothes, tuition and Steve’s medicine.  They haven’t got the money to purchase anything extravagant for their tree.  Bucky found some second-hand lights that mostly work, and Steve strung some popcorn garland.  It’s perfect the way it is, even if it looks a little bare and dry.

Their Christmas Eve dinner is perfect, too, even if it as well isn’t quite what it could be.  The chicken’s good enough, a whole one, and they roasted it and added some potatoes and fresh parsley and Becca baked them a cake that she brought yesterday.  They ate it, enjoyed it, just the two of them at their little table with Steve’s chair that needs a book under it to keep it level and Bucky’s where the upholstery’s worn down to almost nothing.  They ate and talked and laughed, stuffing their faces like two fools at a feast.  It’s exactly what it should be.  Their first Christmas as roommates after Bucky quit school and the two of them started living together so that Steve wouldn’t be alone.

Of course, there are _still_ the things they don’t talk about.  Like scrounging and saving every penny just so they can get by is really hard, especially when Steve has a hard time holding down a steady job because of his health or his endurance.  Manual labor is out, so Steve does a lot of desk work where he can, doing the books and ledgers for Mr. O’Shaughnessy’s grocer’s.  He’s got real nice handwriting, so that’s something he uses to his advantage (even if other people rib him for it being a woman’s talent, which is bullshit).  He also does errands, sweeps storerooms, delivers parcels, does an odd job here and there drawing for the local papers or companies who need artwork done for ads.  And Bucky works at the docks.  Thankfully his father’s friends haven’t ratted him out (although he’s not sure it will matter if they did; Pop’s not talking to him anymore, and they cut him off the second he dropped out of school).  It’s a steady wage, and down there being George Barnes’ son carries clout, so he’s grateful to his father for that, at least.  All of that still barely brings in what they need.  Making ends meet is still difficult.  Steve wants to go to art school more permanently, and Bucky would like not to completely give up on his education.  Both feel a little like a pipedream with the way things are now.  Steve very much enjoys the class he’s taking at Brooklyn College.  Bucky wants to be able to give that to him, because he’s really talented.  He could do something remarkable with it if someone afforded him the chance.

All of that, though, takes a backseat to the daily grind of earning and saving money and spending the bare minimum of their take to survive.  They go out together sometimes, to the dance halls where the dames fawn all over Bucky and ignore Steve, and they saw the Dodgers play again last spring.  But the treats and comforts are few and far in between.

That’s okay with Bucky.  Sure, it hurts not having his folks talking to them.  Of course it does.  He misses them something fierce. Pop was furious when he said he was leaving college and working fulltime instead.  He was somehow even angrier when he found out Bucky was moving out of their place to move in with Steve.  No amount of trying to explain how Steve was alone and shouldn’t be appeased him.  Ma’s more sympathetic; she’s helping them on the sly, passing a few dollars here and there, mending their clothes for free, dropping food at their door every once in a while.  So’s Becca, hence the cake (which was delicious).  But other than that, they’re on their own.  Bucky loves that.  Steve’s not so sure.  He feels pretty guilty about the whole thing, afraid Bucky’s throwing away everything (his family, future, and home) for him when he’s nothing but a burden and unable to bring in his fair share.  That’s the melancholy rearing its ugly head again, hanging on from Christmas last year when Steve finally broke down about his mother’s death.  Bucky tells him to shut up when they _do_ talk about it, which isn’t often.  There’s no past here in their apartment – _their_ apartment – and no need for a future, not really.  There’s just here and now, and here and now Bucky has everything he wants.

Mostly.  He still hasn’t told Steve the truth about how he feels.  Another year has gone by, and he still can’t.

He’s not letting that bother him, though.  After dinner, they settle in their parlor.  Steve makes hot chocolate the way his mother always used to, extra creamy and thick, and they sit side by side on their old couch in companionable silence.  The radio’s going in the background, playing some songs like “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” and “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” and all kinds of classic holiday carols.  The soft music is pleasant, and Steve hums along as he sips his drink and stares at the tree.  “It’s a real nice one, Buck.”

“Hmm?”  Bucky’s been hazy and day-dreaming, belly full and body warm and mind fairly lost on Steve being so close.

“The tree.”

“Oh, yeah.”  They go back to a comfortable silence, but Bucky’s paying more attention to Steve now.  He’s dressed in a nicer sweater, a wool one that’s gray and warm, and brown slacks.  The top of his brown tie peeks over the collar of the sweater, and he looks content and comfortable.  Lately, even with his health issues, he’s seemed that most of the time, warm and comfortable and happy.  Not even the melancholy stands a chance against the fact that they’re both happier together than they ever have been apart.  That this is where Bucky _knows_ he belongs.  And, yes, there have been sacrifices, but Steve feeling good is far more important than anything Bucky could have gained from going away to school, from going on with his life.

_Can’t go on with my life.  My life’s here._

He grins and gets up and goes into their bedroom.  He stashed Steve’s gift under his bed, back by a couple of musty boxes there, and he gets it out.  Steve’s watching him in confusion when he comes back, and Bucky’s grin gets even wider, big with pride and excitement.  He hands Steve the box, wrapped up in the best paper he could find.  Steve frowns.  “What’s this?”

“Your present.”

Steve grimaces and sets his drink down next to the couch.  “I didn’t you anything because we promised we weren’t going to–”

“I lied,” Bucky declares with a sly grin.  “Open it.”

Steve’s frown gets deeper, furrowing his brow.  “We were gonna save the money.”

“I worked extra to pay for it.  It wasn’t a problem.”  That’s true, even if his back is still aching days later from picking up the extra shifts.

“Buck…”

“Open it, ya jerk.  Come on.”

Steve glares at him a moment more, salty about it all, but with Bucky’s bright smile absolutely unwavering, he can’t stay mad.  He smiles, too, and pulls open the bow and undoes the wrapping (carefully.  Always carefully so things can be saved and reused).  Bucky sits next to him as he opens the box.  His face softens in surprise.

Bucky beams.  “Noticed your other one was getting kinda full.”

Steve pulls the sketchbook out.  It’s a nice one (well, as nice as Bucky can afford).  The lady at the shop said it was really high-quality paper, and the charcoals he bought with it are good, too.  Steve runs his hand over the book’s cover, all his previous ire dissipating.  “Wow.  This is really great.”  He says that with a little awe in his voice, and Bucky knows he means every word.  He flips through the pages, eyes aglow with excitement over the possibilities, but then he looks up like he’s realizing something.  “But I really didn’t get you anything.”

 _Yes, you did._   They’re here together, living out of each other’s pockets and closer than they have ever been, and while that’s a horrendous torment sometimes when he wants so much more, it’s been so _perfect_ , too.  Exactly what he’s needed.  Being friends with Steve, knowing that Steve’s okay, being certain Steve’s safe and protected.  Making good on his promise, both to himself and to Steve’s mother.  He still loves seeing Steve smile that glowing smile of his, all the way from their first Christmas as boys to now.  He’d give anything in the world to see it, so a few extra shifts and a sore back seem like nothing.  “It’s alright.  Don’t need nothing.”

Steve rolls his eyes and lightly shoves Bucky back.  It doesn’t do much to hide his blush.  “You’re unbelievable.  And you don’t play fair.  You never have.”

“Yep.”  He grins like a fool, high on Steve’s happiness.  Steve’s mock glaring.  He can’t even begin to make it look real.  But, just to appease him, Bucky sighs all long-suffering, and he stands to go to the window beside the tree.  “Here.  I’ll give myself this.”  He snatches up the little toy soldier.  “Happy?”

“Doesn’t count.”

“Always used to.”

“Not when you buy me something nice and I haven’t done the same for you!”

“Ah, shut it,” Bucky says dismissively.  He sits back down, taking a good look at the toy soldier.  It seems much smaller now in his nineteen year-old palm that’s roughened from work, and it’s not as shiny as it was all those years ago.  It’s perfect, too.  Bucky smiles.  “It’s still a neat gift.”

Steve stares at it, lips twisted in a rueful grin.  “Yeah.”

They go back to sitting in silence with the radio humming music in the background.  Steve’s already drawing in his new sketchpad, his fingers that are usually covered in charcoal quickly becoming black anew.  He’s angled his lanky body around on the couch so that he’s facing Bucky more, and he sticks his cold feet under Bucky’s thigh with a sneaky grin.  Bucky rolls his eyes but lets him do it, going back to his hot chocolate with a smirk of his own.  He pretends not to notice that Steve is drawing him.


	7. 1939

It’s Christmas, 1939.

Steve’s sick.

He’s _really_ sick.

Bucky doesn’t know what to do.  This isn’t some cold or a touch of the flu or even a more serious case of bronchitis.  This isn’t like the countless ailments Steve’s had in his life, the ones that have knocked him down but never so badly that he doesn’t get up afterward.  This isn’t even like when Steve was twelve and had scarlet fever that icy February.  That was bad.  Back then, Steve’s mother was there, nursing him through the illness with cool serenity, confident and sure even when the doctor surrendered and suggested they call a priest for Steve’s last rites.  Sarah refused, staying up with Ma and Bucky all through the night to cool Steve’s fever.  She kept a constant vigil at his side, whispering prayers.  Steve survived that, thank heaven.  It permanently damaged his heart and his hearing, but he made it through, mostly thanks to his mother’s unwavering determination that this would not be it, that she wasn’t going to lose her son.

Bucky’s always had a lot of that, unwavering determination, but damn it all if that matters one bit right now.

Steve’s laying in his bed, burning alive.  His eyes are open but not focusing, not really seeing, staring blankly into the shadows overhead.  His skin is hot to the touch as Bucky lays his palm on his forehead, checking his temperature yet again.  He doesn’t know why he bothered to hope.  Nothing’s changed.  Steve’s scalding hot and has been since last night.  Bucky’s terrified.  “Steve,” he whispers.  Steve groans weakly, blinking, freeing tears from his bleary, hazy eyes that roll down his temples.  “God, Steve…”

Steve’s lips are chapped, nearly split they’re so dry, and they shift around a breathy word, but Bucky can’t understand what he’s saying.  He’s gotten much worse over the last twelve hours.  Bucky spent the entire endless night listening to Steve coughing and watching Steve struggling for air and feeling Steve restlessly shifting beside him.  He’s not sure when or how this started.  Nothing in the last few days leading up to the holiday stands out as overly worrisome.  Steve was alright.  Sniffles and coughs, but that’s normal for this time of year when the cold air starts to bother his weak lungs.  Then yesterday morning he woke up with a sore throat and fever, the sort that left him groggy and achy.  He didn’t get out of bed, which worried Bucky, but he insisted he was fine and that Bucky should go to work and stop afterward to get something they can cook for Christmas dinner.  Bucky contacted Mr. O’Shaughnessy on his way to the docks and told him Steve wouldn’t be in for work, but other than that he really didn’t think anything of it until he arrived home last night.  He stuck the beef roast he bought into the ice box, calling Steve’s name as he did.  Even though there was no answer, he excitedly babbled on about the good deal he got on the meat and that he managed to buy a bottle of wine while he fiddled around with the Christmas tree a bit, not even noticing that Steve still wasn’t answering.  No, the seriousness didn’t set in until he found Steve delirious with fever and weak as a kitten in his bed, fighting for every breath.

He’s fighting even harder now.  All through the night he was coughing violently, and Bucky was pretty horrified at the amount of bloody phlegm and mucus that was coming up.  Steve’s been sweating like crazy, skin clammy and pale.  Every cough seems like agony, and Bucky’s helpless.  He knows enough from years of watching Steve’s mom take care of him to recognize that everything he’s seeing is really bad.  In a panic last night he looked through Sarah’s old medical books and diaries, and he’s pretty sure Steve has pneumonia.  He’s hardly a doctor, but that’s sure what it looks like.  _Pneumonia._  

Pneumonia can kill you.

And Bucky doesn’t know what to do.  It’s the morning of Christmas Eve, and he’s all alone and absolutely exhausted, and Steve needs a doctor.  He _knows_ that.  This has escalated so quickly that he’s reeling with fear, tears constantly blurring his vision as he holds Steve’s hand and whispers solace, but he knows in his heart and soul that Steve needs help now.  The sun’s come up after that infinite, hellish night, lighting the beginnings of a gray day, and Bucky can only see how badly Steve’s suffering.

But there’s no way they can afford it.  Doctor Hennessy’s been by a few times over the last couple years; he’s a nice older fellow, practical and more willing to work with Steve’s poor health than other doctors in the past (like the one who gave up on him when he was twelve, like the ones who think his asthma is a mental condition, which has always angered Bucky so damn much), but he doesn’t visit for free.  They’ve always paid for it.  Steve’s insisted on that, because he hates charity, hates thinking he needs special treatment even though he damn well deserves it.  Bucky’s not sure he’ll come without money, and he doesn’t have enough.  Not after buying Steve a pocket watch for Christmas and splurging on that goddamn roast and wine.

Plus, going out to get a doctor means leaving Steve, and he’s not sure he can do that.

He’s _terrified_.

He swallows another sob, reaching into the bowl of tepid water he just brought from the kitchen a little while ago.  He pulls out the rag soaking in there, wrings out the excess liquid, and brushes it over Steve’s face.  Steve hardly twitches with it.  The unnatural flush of fever on his cheeks is disturbing.  So is the fact that he doesn’t focus, not even when Bucky leans right over him.  “Stevie?  Can you look at me?”

The pink of Steve’s tongue barely darts out to wet his lips.  “Buck…”

Bucky gets the cup of water by the bed and dribbles a little bit of it into Steve’s mouth.  “Christ,” he whispers.  “God help me…”  This is his fault.  His goddamn fault for not noticing Steve was really sick, for not stopping to think that whatever he caught yesterday could get bad so quickly, for spending money left and right like a moron when they need to be saving.  For thinking he can handle this by himself.  He’s _alone_ , and there’s no one here to help him.  He hasn’t talked to his family in _months_.  The few friends he and Steve have aren’t close.  Their neighbors are already suspicious of them living together and therefore keep their distance.  They think there’s something wrong with the two of them, that Bucky’s living here with a sick good-for-nothing when he should be making something of himself, that they’re odd or queer or worse.  Mrs. Riley from next door may be willing to stay with Steve while Bucky gets help, but she’s old, so old and crotchety, and he doesn’t know if–

“Ruinin’…”  Steve blinks again, and his eyes finally settle on Bucky’s face.  “Ruinin’ Christmas… again.”  Those plush lips, cracked with dehydration, pull into a weak, rueful smile.  “Every year…”

“Shut up,” Bucky hisses.  He sniffles, wipes his leaking eyes, and goes back to cooling Steve’s face.  “Jesus, shut up.  You ain’t ruinin’ anythin’.”

Steve groans and closes his eyes.  Bucky’s almost grateful.  They’re so clouded with delirium that just seeing them like this hurts, like he’s lost Steve already.  He can’t stand to think that.  He gets another of their well-used washcloths from the little pile next to the bed and dunks that into bowl.  After unbuttoning more of Steve’s pajama top, he lays the wet cloth on his chest.  Steve jerks, his chest crackling and rattling with each strained breath, and Bucky can practically _feel_ his lungs drowning in fluid under his fingers.  Steve’s heart’s racing, too, a fast, shallow flutter against Bucky’s fingertips.  Bucky sighs through another sob.  “You just gotta hang on.  You hear me?  Hang on.  Don’t you quit on me.”

Steve whimpers.  “Hurts.”

“I know, pal.  I know.  Do anything to make it better.  Swear I would, Steve.”

“Buck…”  Steve’s whisper twists into a cough.  He’s so weak now that he can hardly do it, his entire body rebelling against him as he dissolves into a paroxysm of gasping and choking.  Bucky immediately gets an arm around him, pulling him close and steadying him.  With a whistling breath, Steve wails a pitiful cry, burying his face into Bucky’s chest.

Bucky squeezes his eyes shut, but that doesn’t stop the tears.  “Oh, God,” he whispers.  _Don’t take him from me.  Please.  He’s all I have.  Please don’t take him…_   He works his hand up and down Steve’s shuddering back, holding him as closely as he can.  _Please don’t take him.  Please, God…_   He hasn’t prayed, not really, in years.  He realized some time ago when his world started to shift to center around Steve that what he knows in his heart and what the church teaches aren’t compatible.  Old Father O’Malley’s sermons about the nature of sin, the evils that are somehow inherent in what he feels for Steve…  He couldn’t stand being told that, being made to feel wrong or ashamed about the one thing in his life that seems right and pure.  Still, he goes to mass on occasion.  Steve’s a lot better about it than he is, but then Steve’s always believed more.

Bucky’s trying to believe now.  “Please,” he whispers, rocking Steve gently as he coughs and coughs with all of his remaining strength.  _This can’t be it.  It can’t be!_ “Please, please…  Please don’t take him!”

Minutes slip away like this, with Steve laboring for every small breath in Bucky’s arms, Bucky lingering in terror and grief, too afraid to let Steve go.  Finally Steve does settle.  His breathing halts, twists, but somehow evens out.  Bucky lays him gently back onto the mattress and wipes the hint of red from his lips with the washcloth.  Steve’s wheezing miserably, eyes closed and sunken, hardly even shivering anymore.

He’s dying.  Bucky knows it.  There’s nothing he can do.  Trying uselessly to cool his fever and help him breathe and ease his pain…  That’s all meaningless.  Steve needs medicine.  He needs a doctor.

Bucky gasps a sob, collapsing in his horror a moment before gathering himself.  Somehow he does.  He holds Steve’s hand between his own, squeezing hard, and kisses his sharp knuckles desperately.  “I gotta go,” he moans.  Salty tears coat his lips, slip onto Steve’s skin, drip onto the bedding.  “I gotta, Steve.  I gotta get you help.”

Steve doesn’t respond.  He seems like he’s gone back to sleep, maybe even lost consciousness.  Bucky leans over him, burying his face in the hollow of Steve’s throat.  The heat is so high it’s disgusting, but he doesn’t pull away.  He grasps Steve’s bony shoulder and loses control of the sob lodged in his chest, barking it roughly into Steve’s skin.  “Please don’t leave me,” he begs.  He can’t stop the truth now, the words pouring from his torn heart.  “Please, hang on.  Please, please…  _I love you…_ ”

He leans up and kisses Steve’s forehead and his cheeks and his nose and eyelids, every part of his face he can.  Not his lips, though.  That seems wrong like this, like something he’s stealing when he’s got no right.  Sobbing miserably, he pulls the quilts over Steve anew and folds Steve’s hands together over his belly.  Then he runs.  He gathers _everything_ they have that’s worth anything, the money in the mason jar under his bed where they keep what they can save, Steve’s gift this year, the nice cufflinks Steve got him last year, _anything_ he can use to barter for Steve’s life.  Even the little toy soldier where it’s by the Christmas tree.  _Everything._   It’s not going to be worth much, but hopefully it’s worth Steve’s life.  He shoves it all into a satchel and grabs his coat and rushes out before he has second thoughts.  He can’t acknowledge his fears, that Steve’s going to die while he’s gone, that he’ll be all alone and afraid when he does, that he’s just saw Steve for the last time and _he can’t do this_ –

He has to.  He runs down the steps of their building, bursting out onto the snowy street, and takes off in a sprint.  He prays and prays – _God, please, please protect him.  Don’t take him don’t take him don’t take him_ – and hopes beyond anything that Doctor Hennessy’s home, that he’s willing to help them on Christmas Eve.  People stare at him like he’s crazy as he runs.  He bumps into a few pedestrians, mumbles apologies, panicked beyond rational thought or caring.  It seems to take forever, but it’s only maybe thirty minutes until he reaches the doctor’s building.  Doctor Hennessy told him months ago where he lives in the event Bucky needs him off hours for an emergency just like this, but Bucky never imagined it’d actually happen.  He’s shaking even harder by the time he gets there, the bitter cold making it so much worse.  And he’s frantic as he heads up to the doctor’s apartment.  The building is much nicer, the sort of place in which Bucky can only dream about living now, and a couple people glare at him as he races past with derision in their eyes.  He doesn’t stop or even slow down.  A few minutes later, he’s pounding on Doctor Hennessy’s door.  “Doctor?  Doctor Hennessy?  Sir!  Please, open the door!”  His voice cracks, and he knows he’s making a scene.  He doesn’t give a damn.  “Sir!  Please!  I need help!  _Please!”_

The door opens, and Doctor Hennessy is there.  He’s dressed in casual clothes, his beady eyes narrowed behind his spectacles.  “James Barnes?  What on earth – it’s Christmas Eve!”

Bucky’s one breath from complete hysteria.  “Please, I need your help.”  He thrusts the satchel full of money and trinkets at the doctor.  “Steve’s sick.  He’s real sick.  He’s coughing up blood.  He’s got a really bad fever, and he can’t hardly breathe, and–”

Doctor Hennessy’s expression tightens.  “Calm down!  Calm down!”

Bucky _can’t_.  “He’s dying, Doctor Hennessy.  Please, please, you gotta help him.  _Please.”_

Doctor Hennessy stares at him a moment, scrutinizing him, anger and irritation all over his banal, aged faced.  Then he sighs and nods, apparently deciding Bucky is trustworthy enough for him to leave the warm comfort of his apartment on Christmas Day.  Bucky wants to pass out from relief, pushing the bag at him again. “It’s all I have.  Please take it.  I can pay more after but–”

Doctor Hennessy refuses.  “Stop with that nonsense.  Let’s go.”

The trip back to their little apartment is fast and silent, Doctor Hennessy carrying his bag, his shorter legs struggling to keep up with Bucky’s long, frenzied strides.  Bucky won’t slow down; every second they spend walking is torture.  He can’t let himself think, because immediately he imagines Steve, chest finally still with the last breath gone from it, skin cold and waxy, eyes closed never to open again, voice silent…  It’s unbearable.  _He’ll be okay.  I’m not too late.  God protected him.  God’s keeping him alive._ He wants so badly to believe that.  Father O’Malley always said a repentant sinner can know God’s love again.  He wonders if Steve getting so sick now isn’t punishment somehow, what _Bucky_ deserves for all the impure thoughts he’s had in his life.  For all the times he faltered in good Christian teachings and let himself be swayed by his desires.  _You reap what you sow._ That’s why he’s living with Steve _alone_ after all, because he wants Steve, and he’ll take their close friendship over nothing.  Steve’s paying for his crimes, for his sins.  A lamb sacrificed.  A martyr burning to punish the evil.  Bucky will repent, truly, let Steve go forever, stop dreaming about kissing him and holding him close and _loving_ him and being loved _by_ him the way a man usually loves a woman.  He’ll forget the unspoken want in his heart.  He’ll marry a nice girl and go back to school and settle down like he was supposed to.  He’d do _anything_ to save Steve’s life.

He prays now that he’s not too late.

They pass by their neighbors as they rush up the steps to their floor.  Wide eyes watch their harried flight, alarmed and curious to see the doctor and Bucky this frazzled on Christmas Eve of all days.  Bucky hardly pays attention.  His hands shake as he fumbles in his pocket for his keys.  His heart’s pounding and sweat covers his brow and his stomach is clenched so tightly that he feels faint.  Everything’s spinning.  Somehow he manages to get the key into the lock and get the door open.

He doesn’t even wait for Doctor Hennessy to enter, doesn’t invite him in.  He can hardly breathe he’s so afraid, and all those awful images of Steve dying alone haunt his every step as he races inside.  _Please no.  Please please please…_

He thunders into the bedroom.  Steve’s still in the bed, _exactly_ as Bucky left him, quilts up over his body, hands on his stomach, unmoving.  _Lifeless._   No.  He stands frozen in the doorway, staring hard, breathing harder, unwilling to accept it.  He can’t be too late.  He can’t be!

He’s not.  Just as he sees Steve’s chest rise with just the faintest of breaths, Doctor Hennessy shoves him forward and out of the way.  “Move, son!  Move!”  Bucky stumbles as the doctor goes to the bedside.  There he sits, and Bucky observes blankly, eyes blurry with tears again.  Doctor Hennessy pulls the quilts away and grabs Steve’s thin wrist.  He counts his pulse as he prods at him.  “Steven?  Steven, can you hear me?”  Weathered fingers touch Steve’s face, lifting his eyelids, feeling his brow for his fever, palpating his throat.  His hands go lower, examining Steve’s chest and belly, and from the bag comes the doctor’s stethoscope and thermometer.  He’s quick, thorough, and Bucky watches it all, too frightened to think.

It feels like forever, but it’s only a couple minutes later that Doctor Hennessy pulls the stethoscope away.  He sighs, shaking his head, and tugs the blankets back over Steve.  Then he says the very thing Bucky has known and feared all this time.  “It’s pneumonia.”

And even though he knew and feared it, he’s not ready to actually _hear_ it.  “Pneumonia?”

Hennessy nods, staring at him with grim eyes.  “A very acute case.  His lungs are full of fluid.  The fever alone is enough to be fatal.  He needs to be in a hospital if he’s to have any chance.”

 _Hospital._   For some reason, that hasn’t occurred to him.  His thinking hasn’t extended beyond this, beyond getting the doctor and getting Steve help.  Now…  “We – I – there’s no way we can afford that.”

It seems terribly crass that that’s his biggest concern, but his brain is skipping and he still can’t focus enough to have a coherent thought.  Doctor Hennessy stands and comes closer, lowering his voice like it matters, like Steve’s conscious enough to overhear a conversation not meant for him.  “Worry about that later.  If he doesn’t receive prompt treatment, he’ll die.  As it stands now, I’m not even certain that it’s not already too late.”

Bucky grimaces, tears rolling unabashed down his cheeks.  He’s too upset to be embarrassed or afraid the doctor will see those tears for what they are.  He rakes his hands through his hair, restless energy jolting over his muscles.  How did this happen?  How? _Why?_ “Holy hell…”

“At least at the hospital we can try to save his life.  There are new medicines available there that can fight the illness.”  Doctor Hennessy grasps his arm.  “You need to take him, son.  Right now.”

_Right now._

So he does.  Doctor Hennessy makes the necessary arrangements.  He goes to a phone down on the street and calls for an ambulance, and while he does, Bucky bundles Steve’s body into their quilts and lifts him into his arms.  “Hang on, Stevie,” he whispers breathlessly, cradling Steve close, covering his face.  Even the chill in the air can kill him.  Swallowing down his fear, Bucky moves.  “Hang on.  Please hang on…  Hang onto me.”

By now everyone realizes something is going on.  Old Mrs. Riley holds the door of the apartment open for Bucky as he rushes out with Steve in his arms.  The Pattersons are there, ushering people out of the stairwell so Bucky can get down via a clear path.  Other neighbors and tenants watch with sympathy in their eyes.  Bucky can’t stand them.  All the times these people have maybe looked down their noses at the two of them, regarded them with suspicion, treated Steve poorly because he was small and sickly.  Suddenly it’s like the entire world’s there, watching this, and he hates them all.  No one is going to make him feel bad for loving Steve Rogers.

The hospital’s very quiet.  They immediately take Steve in, get him settled into a room.  Bucky waits for them to finish.  He waits and paces, paces and waits.  Eventually Doctor Hennessy and some of the hospital staff come back to tell him that Steve is comfortable, that they’re administering a new medicine (Bucky forgets the name of it instantly, something that fights bacteria), that if they can reduce his fever and improve his breathing, his chances of survival will increase.  There is talk of bringing in a priest, though, which Bucky refuses.  There’s also talk of Steve’s next of kin, of his family, and Bucky says it’s only him.  And finally there’s talk of the cost, that depending on how things go, Steve could be hospitalized for days, even weeks, and that will come with a hefty price tag.

“You don’t need to worry about that.”  The low, familiar voice makes Bucky turn, and there’s Pop coming closer, Ma at his side.  Bucky’s eyes widen; he hasn’t seen them in what feels like forever.  They both look older, more worn.  Inside him there’s that part of him yet tied to his parents, that’s been hurting since his father cast him out for quitting school, and it’s throbbing viciously now.  It takes all he has to stay rooted to his spot and not run into his mother’s arms like a little boy.  He may not be a little boy anymore, but he’s very much desperate for comfort, now more than ever.

Pop comes up to the doctor.  “We’ll handle whatever bills there are.”

Doctor Hennessy glances among them like he can sense the change in mood, the disquiet tinged with completely contradictory relief.  Then he nods and says they can see Steve momentarily before he and the others leave.

Pop sighs.  “Money’s coming from what we saved for your schooling,” he says, “plus whatever else we can spare.  Still might not be enough.”

“I know,” Bucky says, almost numb with relief.  He’s staring at his shoes.  “I’ll make arrangements.  Get a second job if I gotta.  I’ll–”

“James.”

Bucky looks up, tingling with anxiety and apprehension.  The emotions churning in his gut are too tangled and twisted for him to parse, let alone process.  He wants them here so badly, but he’s worried about what they’re here to say or do.  He needs their support right now, but he’s too damn proud and terrified at the same time to ask for it.  He needs to know he’s not alone in his love for Steve, that _love_ _for Steve_ , no matter its shape or form, is something good and pure.

But he’s realistic.  This is the life he’s chosen, _who he is,_ and it’s not acceptable.  Not to them or anyone else.  His parents coming here is the best he’s going to get.  It’s a sacrifice.  He’s been telling himself that it’s worth it.  It _is_ worth it.  His parents are _giving_ him what he needs, everything they can.  They’re helping Steve, who was at their dinner table more nights than not, who slept on their couch cushions all the time, who spent every Christmas with them from that first tentative one to Sarah’s death.  Who they loved like one of their own once a upon a time.  They’re _saving_ Steve.  “Take care of him,” Pop finally says, “and take care of yourself.”

Bucky feels himself nod.  Pop gives a pained, stiff nod in return and turns to go.

Ma’s not so inhibited.  She comes closer, grasps Bucky’s face in her hands.  He’s taller than her, has been for some time, but when she looks at him like this, all he remembers is being small, standing beside her in the grocer’s staring at little Steve Rogers as Ma pets his hair and talks about how much she loves her new city life with Steve’s mother.  That moment and a million like it, sweet kisses and soft lullabies and stern talking-tos and savory food…  They all shine her eyes.  She kisses his forehead, embraces him for a second, before turning and following Pop out.

Bucky stands alone in the hospital hallway for a long time, watching the white doors where they left.  He doesn’t feel any more certain of his future and his relationship with them now than he did before, to be honest, but he feels… _better._   Like he always did when things were scary or worrying when he was a kid.  Ma and Pop making it right so he can have the best chance he can to be happy.

That gives him the bravery to finally move, to walk down the hallway and find Steve.  He’s never liked hospitals, the gleaming tile and pungent smells.  Not that he’s been in them too often.  That makes this all the more daunting and alien, but on he goes until he’s inside Steve’s room.  There are a few beds in there, but thankfully the others are empty.  Steve’s in the one farthest from the door.  He’s covered in white bedding up to his chin.  Pale, lusterless blond hair curls over his forehead.  His eyes are tightly closed, sealed as if to protect him from the world.  He’s so pale, so frail, so small and sick.

But he’s alive.  He’s still breathing, even breathing a little easier, a little more regularly without that horrific wheeze.  And his lips look better, not so dry and chapped.  Maybe there’s even a little more color to his face.  A little.  It’s something.

Bucky pulls a chair beside the bed.  He doesn’t sit in it right away, though.  He still has his satchel full of everything they own in this world that’s worth anything, trinkets and Bucky’s gift to Steve this year and whatever else he shoved in there before he ran in a panic that morning.  Reaching inside, he thinks a moment about laying Steve’s gift on the little table by his bed.  Something for him to look forward to when he wakes up ( _he’s gonna wake up I know it_ ).  But he doesn’t because he still may need to sell it to get the money to pay for all of this.

So instead out comes the little toy soldier.  It’s not worth anything to anyone other than them.  Bucky sets it on the table, pointing it at the bed.  Then he looks around, sees that he’s as alone as it seems in this silent white room, so he lets himself go just for a moment.  He leans close to Steve and kisses his forehead again.  His cheeks and eyes and nose.

Still not his lips.  He loves Steve too much to take that.  He wants Steve to give it.  One day…  “It’s gonna be okay now,” he promises, his voice shaking.  “They’re gonna make you better.  You’re gonna get better.  You hear me?  And then we can have Christmas.”  _Our roast and our wine and you and me by our tree._   He swallows the lump in his throat until he can go on.  “Just you wait, Stevie.  Nothing’s ruined.  It’ll be perfect.”

Steve breathes easier and easier, like he _knows_ Bucky is there, and Bucky smiles.  He chances pressing his lips to his forehead one last time, whispers once more the vow that Steve won’t hear.  This isn’t like a stolen kiss.  This isn’t taking something that’s not his to take.  It’s giving, with all of his heart.  _“I love you.”_

Then he settles in to watch Steve sleep.


	8. 1941

It’s Christmas, 1941.

Well, not quite.  It’s after Christmas, New Year’s in fact, and even though the world’s caught up in the looming war, in the attack on Pearl Harbor just weeks ago and the tensions sparking across the nation, Bucky can’t focus on anything other than Steve.  He’s stupid.  He’s so _goddamn_ stupid.  This was _his_ goddamn _stupid_ idea, and he can’t handle it.  He doesn’t know what he was thinking.

Steve’s dancing with Marla Mayer.  Marla’s a nice girl, pretty, short and petite and quiet with red curls and green eyes.  The sort of girl with whom Steve _should_ dance.  She went to school with them, works now as a seamstress in her parents’ tailor shop.  She’s real sweet, a fine catch, and she’s the first girl in _forever_ who’s paid Steve any attention whatsoever.

And Bucky is practically seeing red.

The party they’re at is positively hopping.  The band’s loud, brass horns and cymbals and drums crashing through the dance hall, and everyone’s out on the floor.  It’s a right grand time, only Bucky’s spending it in the shadows in the corner of the room, glaring at Steve and Marla.  Steve’s terrible at the Lindy Hop.  Honestly, he’s terrible at dancing period.  He’s got no rhythm and no practical experience but this one salts Bucky worse than anything else because _he_ taught Steve how to do it.  He taught Steve the steps, the way to twist and jump and lead his partner.  God, that was four or five years ago, right around when Steve’s mother passed away and they started living together.  He tells himself he taught Steve the dance for practical purposes.  Bucky’s always tried to keep up appearances in a sense, dragging Steve out on double dates.  Them being happy holed up with each other is one of the reasons the guys at the docks and other folks around the neighborhood started to notice that their living arrangement was pretty suspect, so Bucky’s been making the effort these last months to get the both of them out with girls on the regular.  _Visibly_ so. 

That’s why it’s almost ridiculous that he’s feeling this way at all.  Steve doesn’t know their nights out are a farce, because he still doesn’t know Bucky loves him.  That Bucky wants him.  So to Steve these aren’t fake dates.  They’re real ones.

And, in turn, that’s why this stings so much.  Steve’s flush with exertion, a light sheen of sweat covering his face.  He’s godawful, hopeless with his feet, but it doesn’t matter because he looks amazing like this.  He so rarely ever lets himself go and embraces the moment, particularly in social settings.  Steve’s self-conscious like that.  Right now he’s probably a tad drunk (Steve can’t hold his liquor for anything), smiling and dancing like he hasn’t had asthma his whole life and a bad bout of pneumonia didn’t nearly kill him a couple years back.  And, sure, he’s clumsy as all hell, but it’s the look on his face that hurts.  He’s so open and loose.  _Happy._

And he’s happy because of _her_.

Bucky looks away.  He really needs to stop with this.  It’s pathetic, is what it is, and stupidly jealous.  For Christ’s sake, Steve’s allowed to have a good time.  It’s not like Bucky doesn’t.  He takes girls dancing all the time, and he tells himself it’s for show, but he enjoys it all the same.  He enjoys being with them, finds them attractive, _likes_ their attention.  He’s kissed plenty of girls, and for a while there a few years back when his family cut him off and he was really struggling with his feelings for Steve, he pushed himself harder to want to be with them.  Maybe he was just confused, and spending more time with girls would help him figure it out.

Nope.

Nope, it didn’t help, and, _nope_ , it didn’t make him stop wanting Steve.  When Steve got sick so bad a couple years back, when Bucky practically lost his mind with worry and fear, he should have just been honest then.  He should have had the goddamn guts to tell Steve the truth.  He should have told him dozens of times since, hundreds of missed opportunities.  All of this “double date” nonsense was just that: nonsense.  He wants Steve.  They’ve been living together nearly five years now, and it’s a constant struggle to keep up with the lie.  If he could just be honest with himself and, more importantly, honest with Steve, maybe they wouldn’t be spending _another_ Christmas like this.  The goddamn status quo, pretending to enjoy a party filled with dames and dancing when inside he can’t stand the fact that Steve’s smiling like that at Marla Mayer.

“What’s the matter, Bucky darling?” purrs a sultry voice to his left.  It’s Leona.  She’s one of a couple of girls who’ve latched on to him since they got here.  The girl Bucky came with, Patty, is long gone, abandoning him when he stopped paying so much attention to her because he was distracted by Steve and Marla.  Leona is also a little drunk and very clearly looking for a good time.  He’s not like that, and even if he was, he’s not interested tonight.  Not with his heart aching like this.

She’s not taking a hint, though.  “Come on.  We can get out of here, huh?  Go someplace…”  She drags her finger down his chest.  “Quieter.”  Bucky has to bite down a growl as he watches Steve swing Marla.  The song’s coming to a big finish, and she’s laughing.  She’s so small Steve can do that, although Steve’s deceptively strong.  He throws a real mean right hook.  Bucky’s seen it enough times to know that.  That’s probably what Steve would throw at him if he went over there and told him to quit acting like this.  This is _stupid_ , but the whole evening is being ruined by the fact that Steve’s finally getting attention from someone.  God, Bucky’s petty.  Apparently these fake dates of his were okay so long as none of the girls involved ever take any interest in Bucky’s pathetic wingman.  This party he wanted to come to…  It’s the straw breaking the camel’s back.  _Years_ of suffering with the secret of how he feels…  No, it’s beyond petty that he’s mad Steve’s having fun with someone else.  It’s disgusting.  It’s _sickening._

The band’s rising up to the finale, and when it’s over, Marla’s laughing and leaning into a winded Steve and kissing his cheek.  Shock splays all over Steve’s face, and he raises a hand to brush over his skin like he just can’t believe a girl actually kissed him.  But then he looks around, and his eyes catch Bucky’s, and Bucky’s glaring before he can stop himself.  Steve’s surprise shifts to confusion and then to pain.  Bucky thinks he’s a greedy, selfish bastard, but it hurts too much.

It doesn’t matter.  They only see each other for a second before Marla’s dragging Steve off through the crowd to get another drink.

“Bucky baby?”  Leona’s pawing at him again.  She looks ridiculous pouting like she is.  “Come on, honey.  Let’s go.  It’s almost midnight and I don’t want to ring in the new year here.”

Neither does Bucky.  He can’t even see Steve now, and it _aches_ so bad that he wants to cry.  That, in turn, makes him think of Pop and how Pop always said boys shouldn’t cry at all, let alone cry over love, let alone over someone he’s not _supposed to love_.  Christ, what the hell is the matter with him?  Everything’s so twisted up inside, so tangled and sharp, and he can’t stand it anymore.

So he runs.

The icy air outside feels like a slap to the face, but even that’s not enough to knock him to his senses.  He exits the dance hall, muffled music and laughter chasing him out into the cold night.  The street’s busy, all of Brooklyn alive with the holiday, but he doesn’t care.  He stuffs his hands into his coat pockets and lowers his eyes and walks home as fast as he can.  The snow crunches under his shoes.  The fresh polish he put on earlier that night is already scuffed.  He sat on their couch, shining them up nice and pretty, telling Steve that it’d be fun, that Marla’s a sweet girl, that she’d like him.  Steve was hemming and hawing in the kitchen, complaining that that was what Bucky said about Betty and Maggie and Paige and Esther…  Bucky told him to shut it, to get dressed, that his brown suit is his nicest (and it is, of the few Steve has).  So Steve did and Bucky did himself up but good with pomade and his gray suit and cologne, and off they went, chatting and laughing and having a good time with each other.  Steve looked amazing in that suit, and everything seemed perfect and full of excitement.  _A new year._

Now Bucky’s coat stinks of perfume and booze and cigarette smoke.  The pomade feels greasy in his hair.  His shoes are _scuffed_.  He’s feeling so lousy, his belly clenched up hard enough that he may puke.  He’s walking home alone on New Year’s Eve, tears stubbornly blurring his eyes.  _Everything’s_ wrong because a pretty girl gave Steve a kiss, because Steve smiled at her, because Steve looked at her the way Bucky wants him to look _at him_.  And he hates himself for feeling this way.  This can’t go on.  He can’t torture himself like this anymore.

By the time he’s back at their apartment, he’s convinced himself that he needs to move out.  Move on.  He’s been telling himself for so long that it’s okay, that he can live on whatever relationship he has with Steve.  That whatever _part_ of Steve he has is enough.  But it’s not.  And he feels terrible for feeling the way he does.  It’s not Steve’s fault.  Steve can’t read his goddamn mind, can’t figure him out when Bucky can’t even figure himself out.  And Steve’s not like that.  Steve’s not like him.  He’s been a fool to think he could be.

A new year.  He needs to start accepting that what he’s wanted since he’s known how to want…  That’s never happening.

He stands alone in their apartment.  It’s dark, quiet.  All the lights are off, and even though it’s New Year’s, the building is eerily silent.  The floor creaks even though he barely shifts his weight.  Nothing looks right.  The tree’s a huge, hulking shadow.  Their old couch looks ratty and saggy.  Their few things seem shallow and useless.  The clock is ticking.  It’s almost midnight.

On the little desk below it is the little toy soldier.  Bucky just happens to spot it.  It’s been there a couple years.  Bucky never had to sell it after Steve got sick a couple years ago, but since bringing it back, they haven’t done much with it.  It’s just been sitting there, somewhat buried under a few of Steve’s sketches, surrounded by some of their books.  If Bucky squints, he can see the dust on it.

Suddenly it’s too much.  He’s across the room, sweeping _everything_ off that desk.  The papers flutter to the floor, the books go down with thuds, and the pens skitter.  The soldier lands under the couch, Bucky thinks, rolling somewhere out of sight.  It feels _good_ and _wrong_ all at once, and he breathes heavily, trying so damn hard not to cry.

The sound of the key in the lock is like a jolt of lightning.  Horror rushes through Bucky because it can only be one person, and he’s standing in a mess with tears on his cheeks and there’s no hiding what’s happened.  There’s no running.  The door opens.

Steve comes in with blustery bolt of cold air.  He sees Bucky standing there, trembling, everything off their desk in a chaotic pile.  Bucky can’t stand to look at him.  “What the hell, Buck?” he asks.  He’s closing the door and coming closer.  “What…”

“It’s nothing,” Bucky blurts.  He can’t stand this.  He goes down to pick up the books.

That’s not going to be good enough.  Not after a whole night of hiding in the shadows like a spurned cat.  “It ain’t nothing!  What’s got into you?”

Bucky sighs shortly, letting the anger push down his grief.  It’s better than facing the truth.  And it’s awful, but maybe pushing Steve away, maybe being a complete ass to him now and _ending_ this, will be better.  Then Steve will never have to learn the awful truth, and he’ll never have to see the horror and disgust and _disappointment_ work its way across Steve’s face before he can stop it.  He’d rather have that mean right hook.  “Shove off, Rogers,” he snaps.  “Not your business.”

“Not my…”  Steve stalks closer.  He may be shorter and skinny as hell, but when he’s all fiery like this, Bucky’s never found him to be anything less than powerful.   “You’ve been giving me the stink eye all night.  You’re the one who wanted to go to the party!  So what gives?”

“Nothing.”

Steve’s not going to give up, though.  “Christ, Barnes, what’s up with you?”

_“Nothing.”_

“No.”  Steve grabs his shoulder and pulls him up.  In a contest of strength, there’s no way Steve can ever win.  Right here and now, though, Bucky feels helpless and trapped.  When he finally catches Steve’s gaze, he sees nothing but anger and confusion and hurt.  “You keep setting me up on these dates and then you get pissed as all get out when the girl pays any attention to me.  It’s not just tonight.  It’s _every_ time.”  Bucky grimaces.  Steve doesn’t understand that, not that that’s an answer anyway, so he throws his hands up in exasperation.  “I don’t know what you want!  You just want me there to make you look good?”

Here’s the opportunity to push him away, but he can’t.  Those words slice too deep.  “No, Steve.  Jesus.”

“Then these girls you’re chasing won’t go out with you if I’m not there to go with her friend or sister or whatever.”

That slices worse.  “No.”

Steve loses his temper.  “Then _what?_   I can’t figure it out!  I don’t know what you want from me!”

Bucky pulls away and crouches to deal with the mess, gathering up the books and the papers.  There are a couple sketches on the floor, perfect drawings of callused hands and dark, sooty eyes that _can’t be Bucky’s_ , and Steve snatches them up where they fell out of one of his books.  “I don’t want anything,” Bucky says, and the lie burns like acid.

Steve’s face fractures, caught between hurt and anger.  “You’re the one who said we should go,” he says again.  “You said I should have a good time, that Marla’d like me, that she was sweet on…”  His voice trails off.  The anger wins out over the hurt.  “Is _that_ it?  Are you mad she took a liking to me and not you?”

Again, he can use this to end their friendship, to be the complete ass he knows he should be to _stop_ this from going any further, but _he can’t._  His broken heart won’t be denied.  “How can you be so goddamn _blind_?” he hisses, snatching the books up and piling them back on the desk.  The old thing seems like it’s about ready to break with each heavy thud as Bucky slams everything down.

“ _I’m_ blind?  Where do you get off?”  Steve’s eyes flash.  “I’m not there to make you look better!  It’s bad enough that no one’s gonna wanna be with me–”

“That’s not true!”  Steve says shit like that sometimes, that nobody can possibly want to be with him because of his health.  He’s not self-deprecating about it, not really, more practical and pragmatic, but it bugs Bucky something fierce because he’s _right here_ and he _wants_ him.  “Don’t start with that again!  Don’t you see how important you are?  Don’t you know how much I need you with me?  How much I’ve needed that my whole damn life?  Don’t you know that?  _Don’t you?”_

The very second the words come out, he knows they’re too much.  _They’re too much._   He shoves the rest of the papers on the desk, feeling Steve’s eyes on him.  They’re huge and heavy, wide with alarm.  Steve shakes his head.  “Bucky, what are you sayin’?”

Bucky can’t answer.  He stands up.  He needs to get out, get away, stop all of this, because it’s too much and going too far and if Steve presses him, he’ll tell him everything.  That can’t happen because Steve doesn’t…  Steve can’t… 

“Buck.”  Thin fingers perpetually stained with charcoal dig into his arm and make him stop.  Steve whispers, “What are you sayin’?”

He can’t make his voice work.  He’s shaking.

Steve’s shaking, too, with dawning understanding.  “Are – are you sayin’ you want me?”

Bucky swallows the lump in his throat.  “I don’t know what I want.”

Steve’s not appeased by that.  “Are you saying _you_ want me?”

It’s suddenly clear to him.  This isn’t the moment where he pushes Steve away.  No, this is the moment that he’s simultaneously wanted more than anything but tried to avoid for years.  And there’s no sense in lying.  If he’s not honest now, if he doesn’t take this chance to be who he is, it’s never going to happen.  “Yes.”  Steve steps back.  His face is white, expression lax with shock, and Bucky can’t stand it.  It all comes out, all of his fears and insecurities, because if he acknowledges them first, Steve won’t be able to.  Only the words won’t come out right because his mouth won’t work and his voice is trembling and the room is spinning and he can’t think.  He looks down. “But I can’t. It can’t happen.  I know you don’t – you can’t – you don’t need to…  You shouldn’t.  You’re too good for that, too good for – Christ Almighty, I – I…  I can’t–”

“I love you.”

Bucky lifts his head.  “What?”

Steve’s standing there.  His eyes are huge and a little wet.  He exhales slowly, like he, too, is trying to hold himself together.  “I love you,” he says again, and this time Bucky can’t deny it.  He just can’t.  Steve said exactly what he thought he said.  Steve said it.  _He’s saying it right now._   Steve shakes his head helplessly.  “I do.  I–”

“For how long?” Bucky whispers.

Steve looks scared, shifting his shoulders nervously.  “Forever,” he admits in a quiet tone.  “Since…  Since we were kids.  I don’t think I knew what it was back then.  Just knew I had to be with you.  Just wanted you with me.  Now…  I…”  He’s struggling for the words, looking just as lost and afraid as Bucky feels, and inside that awful knot of tension in Bucky’s belly finally loosens.  “I didn’t think you wanted that.  It’s not proper.  It’s _wrong_ , and you…  You’ve been taking girls out left and right.  Insisting I do it, too.  I figured it was better if I tried to like it, because I couldn’t have you–”

“You can have me.”

“What?”

Bucky _can’t stop._   He closes the distance between them in one huge step, kicking most of the books and papers out of the way, and grasps Steve’s face.  He knows he shouldn’t be this bold – _it’s not right_ – but he’s wanted this for so long and Steve said he loves him.  _Steve says he loves me._   Steve’s cheeks are cold under his fingers.  His eyes are huge and so deeply blue.  Bucky sweeps his thumb over his cheekbone.  “You can have me,” he whispers, “if you want me.”

Steve’s mouth is closing over his before he even knows what’s happening.  The kiss is tentative, chaste even, and Steve’s shivering in a way that has nothing to do with the cold.  So is Bucky.  The surprise that flashes over to him rapidly transforms into heat, into joy, into relief and excitement and such overwhelming happiness that he can’t do anything other than _feel._   Steve’s lips are warm and a little chapped.  Steve’s body, right against his, smaller but nothing like a woman’s, subtle muscles and jutting bones and so familiar yet _new_ all the same time.  Steve right here.  Perfect.

He can’t believe this is happening.

Bucky pulls away after what feels like forever to look and make sure he’s not dreaming.  He’s pretty sure he’s not.  Steve’s eyes slipped shut, and those dame’s eyelashes of his flutter as he looks up at Bucky.  “Of course I want you, Buck,” he says, looking as overwhelmed by this as Bucky feels.  He smiles that smile, that _same_ smile.  The one Bucky always wants to give him.  “Always have.”

Bucky kisses him again.  They stand like that in the stillness of their apartment, drinking in the moment.  The last shred of distance between them fades, and Bucky deepens the kiss, prodding at Steve’s sealed lips until he opens his mouth.  Fleetingly he thinks this probably is Steve’s first real kiss, Steve’s first real _anything,_ and he doesn’t want to push, but Steve’s Steve.  Steve doesn’t back down from anything.  Steve knows what’s good, what’s right, so if Steve wants this, it has to be _good_ and _right_.  Steve clutches Bucky’s shirt, kissing back with all fervor and no finesse, and every nerve in Bucky’s body burns.  He pushes Steve to the couch, frantically keeping their mouths locked together, and they stumble over their feet like a couple of graceless buffoons.  Steve laughs as he hits the couch on his back, and Bucky looms over him and grins like a loon.  Then he practically flattens Steve, grasping at clothes and pulling them away, kissing everything he can touch, everything there is to kiss.  Steve kisses right back.

Outside people are counting down the last minute of the year with rapt attention, seconds slipping away in anticipation as they eagerly await whatever comes next.  Inside the little apartment, though, midnight comes and goes, and Bucky and Steve are so lost in each other that they don’t even notice.  Whatever comes next doesn’t matter, not one bit.  Not when they finally have each other.


	9. 1942

It’s Christmas, 1942.

Bucky wakes up first.  It’s a cold, rainy morning, the fat droplets smacking against the pane of the window in their bedroom.  Everything is chilly and damp, the air permeated by wet misery, and Bucky immediately closes his eyes again and snuggles closer to Steve.  Steve’s warm and breathing slowly and deeply, still fast asleep.  Bucky’s always loved him like this, all soft and pliant, peaceful and unbothered.  Those long years of sleeping in his bed across the room and watching Steve like this in the morning, the picture of comfort and contentment with his mussed hair and pouty lips sticking out just a bit…  This was always one of the things he wanted the most.  To wake up like this, with Steve in his arms, held close with the memory of making love the night before fresh in his head…  It’s bliss.

This last year has been incredible.  Living with Steve, _loving_ Steve…  It’s the closest to heaven Bucky’s ever been.  And, sure, it hasn’t always been easy.  They have their moments now like they used to, where they bicker and get under each other’s skin and rub one another wrong.  Bucky wants more than ever to keep Steve safe, and Steve doesn’t take well to his overprotectiveness.  Also, sneaking around is difficult, harder than either of them imagined, because small things, like giving Steve a certain knowing look at the automat or putting his arm around him at the cinema or reaching for his hand as they walk down the street, come too easily.  It’s a constant struggle to suppress it.  If someone finds out the truth about them, jail would likely be the _best_ outcome.  People get hurt or worse for doing what they do.  So it has to be a secret for all intents and purposes, and staying careful and vigilant all the time (even in their own apartment – thankfully old Mrs. Riley is mostly deaf, but the Pattersons across the hall aren’t, and the walls are paper thin) is draining.  It’s not easy to constantly act like nothing’s different between them when everything is.

But it’s been worth it.  Having Steve like this…  There’s no going back, not for either of them.

Bucky sighs softly.  It feels too wretchedly cold (their damn heater’s on the fritz again) to get up, so he splays his fingers on the soft flesh of Steve’s stomach.  His hand moves with every breath Steve takes, deep and even and so nice and perfect that Bucky thanks God every day that Steve’s been healthy lately.  He hasn’t taken ill with anything so far this winter and his asthma is quiet and unbothersome.  It’s been a small miracle.  In fact, if not for what happened a couple days ago, everything’d be absolutely perfect.

He can’t think about it.  Not right now.  He nuzzles his nose into Steve’s neck, Steve’s hair tickling across his forehead, and breathes deeply.  The sense of _Steve_ floods over him.  He wonders sometimes how he can find it so novel and exciting, even after all these months.  He feels saturated and sated, but he always wants more.  He supposes this is what love really is.

He doesn’t want to let it go.

Eventually he does though.  With another heavy sigh, he forces his eyes open and forces himself out of the haze of sleepy happiness.  There’s breakfast to prepare and coffee to make.  Steve will want to go to mass (although how he can stand to sit through it now with everything they’ve become Bucky will never understand).  It’s Christmas Day and Bucky promised himself he’d make it one to remember.

So up he goes, gently untangling himself from Steve’s arms and legs.  He tucks Steve in a little more to ward off the chill, pressing a kiss to his forehead, and gets dressed.  He uses the wash basin to clean up a bit, smoothing down and brushing his hair and brushing his teeth.  After pulling his trousers on, he shakes out his coat a little vigorously and then puts that on, too.  He pauses to look at Steve once more before going on to start cooking.  Steve burrowed deeper under the quilts while he was doing all that, and now there’s only the disarrayed flop of blond hair sticking out.  Bucky smiles at it and wonders not for the first time how he gets to be this lucky, how _no one else_ in this whole wide world _sees_ how incredible Steve is.  He doesn’t know, will never know, and he doesn’t care at all.  Steve is his, and he’s not about to question why he has something so good.

That brings the pain back, so he goes off to try and get breakfast going.  He tidies up the apartment a little from last night, wandering a bit in a daze, trying not to think too much.  Thinking takes his brain to places he doesn’t want it to go.  It’s only a little after seven o’clock in the morning.  Maybe he should hold off on breakfast, let Steve sleep.  Mass isn’t until ten o’clock, so there’s plenty of time.  For some reason, thinking about Steve wanting to go to church leads him to old Father O’Malley, who’s probably passed away by now.  Geez, that makes him feel bad, that their old priest may be dead and he’s none the wiser.  At any rate, Father O’Malley used to read from the Book of Job on occasion (if Bucky remembers).  _“The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.”_   That bothers him even more, and he’s dazed enough that he nearly burns himself on the stove.

“Son of a bitch,” he whispers, yanking his fingers back.  It’s stupid to let himself get lost up in this, and he swore to himself the last couple days that he wouldn’t.  He wouldn’t let this ruin Christmas.  He’s going to make a nice breakfast and treat Steve extra special and make everything _perfect,_ because there’s nothing else he can do, nothing legal anyway.  Plus, doing anything less than obeying the law wouldn’t get him anything anyway.  All it’d do is lose him Steve’s respect.  Steve would probably give anything to be where he is, and Bucky hates that with all his heart.

 _Stop._   He grits his teeth and gets the percolator.  Fills it with coffee grounds and water.  Gets it on the stove.  Turns on the heat.  This is something he can do, something simple.  Breakfast.  Steve will get up hungry, and Bucky can have food waiting, and he can make everything just the way it should be–

“What’s this?”

Jerking in surprise nearly causes Bucky to burn himself again.  He whirls around and sees Steve, still all mussed and muddled from sleep, emerging from their bedroom.  He has a quilt around his narrow shoulders, the bottoms of it brushing against his bare feet.  He shouldn’t be walking around without socks on, the jerk.  Bucky’s fixated on that so he doesn’t notice that Steve’s got a folded piece of paper.  Steve’s hand shake a little as he reads it again, eyes wide and face pale.  “Buck…  What is this?”

 _Shit._   Bucky’s eyes go wide, too.  He presses his hand to the pocket of his jacket and finds it empty.  When he shook his coat out before…  _Damn it._

Steve shakes his head.  Bucky watches the emotions rush over his face, shock and anger and then so much _grief_ , and the seconds of silence that follow where Steve starts to understand are hellish torture.  Steve finally swallows, his Adam’s apple practically lurching with it.  He clutches the blanket tighter around his shoulders and takes a few steps closer, turning the paper around and thrusting it toward Bucky.  “What the hell is this?”

Bucky grimaces.  “Steve–”

“They called you into service!”  Steve shakes the order for induction at Bucky, like Bucky hasn’t seen it, like he hasn’t read it a thousand times over since he got it in the mail two days ago.  _“The President of the United States, to James Buchanan Barnes…  Having submitted yourself to a local board composed of your neighbors for the purposes of determining your availability for training and service in the land or naval forces of the United States, you are hereby notified that you have now been selected for training and service therein.”_   He’s read it so many times that it feels burned into his eyes, seared into his mind, imprinted in his heart.  He got called into the draft last fall, but for some reason, he thought he’d have more time.

It’s not the thought of serving his country that bothers him.  Not at all.  There’s a fight that needs to be fought, and Steve is entirely for it.  He has been since things went south in Europe and the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the US got itself into the war.  He feels like it’s a duty to do everything that can be done to stand up against injustice and tyranny, to protect those who are weak and in need of care.  That’s not at all surprising, considering who Steve is and what he’s always done.  But Steve can’t be a soldier.  He doesn’t seem capable of even acknowledging that.  He’s already tried to enlist once and failed.  Any one of his serious health issues, from his asthma to his chronic ear infections to his scoliosis and heart murmur to his poor immune system…  Any one of those is enough to get that 4F stamped on his enlistment card.  He came home that first time looking more defeated and rejected than Bucky’s seen him be in a long time. 

That evening, Bucky tried to be sympathetic.  He really did.  Underneath his consoling words and the comforting arm around Steve’s shoulders, though, he was thanking God and the army doctors for keeping Steve out of service.  The thought of Steve going off to war…  Even if he was healthy, which he’s not, that’s goddamn _terrifying_.  Steve’s heart has always been much bigger than his body, and Bucky’s never liked seeing him limited by his physical strength or his size.  This time, though?  This time it’s for the best.

Nothing prevented Bucky from getting drafted, though.  He got the notice, and his heart just plummeted.  Keeping Steve here where it’s safe is one thing, but Bucky’s young and strong and able-bodied.  Part of him certainly wanted to enlist when the war broke out.  He can’t deny that.  He knows it’s the right thing to do as much as Steve does.  He couldn’t bring himself to, though.  It’d mean leaving Steve behind, leaving him alone.  He can’t do that.

Not that he has a choice.  Here they are, and Bucky has to go.  Steve’s pulling the letter back and reading it again frantically.  “It says you have to report in on the 28th.”  Helplessly Steve shakes his head.  “That’s three days.  Three…  God, Buck.  Were you gonna tell me?”

There are tears in Steve’s eyes, hurt, angry tears.  Bucky grimaces, desperate to make this better.  “I was,” he swears.  “Of course I was.  I was just going to wait.  I didn’t want to ruin Christmas!  I couldn’t do that.  And I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Hurt me?” Steve sputters, a flush of emotion coloring his pale cheeks.  “You’re the one going off to war!”

 _War._ That brought it all sharply into focus on this gray, hazy morning.  _Called to duty._   He’d have a couple months of basic training, maybe a chance to come home, and then he’d be shipped off to Europe most likely.  An _ocean_ between him and Steve.  Steve’s mouth is limply open because the same awful realization is striking him, too.  It’s even worse in light of how badly he _wants_ to serve.  How much he wants to do what’s right and what’s needed.  Steve wants nothing more than to _protect_ people.

And he’s going to be left behind by everyone, including Bucky.

Steve finally closes his mouth.  His jaw clenches and his eyes harden.  “I’m tryin’ again.”

Bucky winces, not following what Steve means for a second.  Then he scowls.  “No, Stevie.  They already rejected you!  You can’t try again!”

“I’ll put a different name down,” Steve says firmly.  “I’ll say I’m from somewhere else.”

“That’s illegal!”

“I don’t care.  I gotta do this, Bucky.”

Christ, if there’s a way to make this worse, he’s doing it.  Bucky crosses the distance between them and grabs Steve’s shoulders.  His temper cracks, already worn by what’s coming, and he can’t stand the foolish look of defiance bright in Steve’s eyes.  “No.  No, you stay here.  You hear me?  Go to art school.  Work.  Find–”  His voice breaks.  He can’t say it. _Find someone else._ He shudders through a breath.  “I need you to stay.  I need to know you’re safe.”

“I can’t stay here while you and everyone else goes off to fight.  That ain’t right, Buck.  I got _no right_ to do anything less than you, to _give_ anything less than you.”

“Are you listening to me?” Bucky snaps.  He shakes Steve like he’s trying to knock some sense into him.  “ _I_ need to know you’re safe.  I can’t do this, go over there, fight – I can’t do _any_ of that if I don’t know you’re okay.  You hear me?  I don’t want you there.  You’ll die if you go.  I can’t let that happen.”

Steve’s eyes flood with tears.  “You don’t know that!”

“Yes, I do.  That’s why I need you _here._ ”

“That’s not fair.”

Bucky doesn’t let him go, even though his own eyes are stinging and his heart’s breaking.  “No, it’s not.  But it’s the way it is.  You know better than anyone how dangerous it is.  Your dad died fighting a war.  I could…” It’s even harder to say this, and Steve shakes his head hard knowing what’s coming.  Bucky steadies him, grasping his face gently.  “I could die fighting one, too.  Not you, though.  You’re gonna stay here and live.”

“No, Buck.  I can’t.  _I can’t._   I can’t let you go like this.  If you’re going, I’m going with you.  I have to.  I gotta try.  Please, you have to see…”

Bucky can’t see anymore.  The world blurs, and he closes his useless eyes and kisses Steve’s lips hard and tries to ignore the taste of tears and the ache in his chest.  Steve throws his arms around him, the blanket puddling around their feet, the letter fluttering to the floor.  It’s not fair.  It’s not.  They finally have this, have each other, and a world at war is pulling them apart.

They stumble back to bed.  The gray, dreary day slips away, rain knocking against the window all along almost demandingly, but they ignore it.  They ignore it and breakfast and church and Christmas.  They spend the day lost in each other, in pleasure and love and safety and happiness.  A whole day of kisses and whispers and caresses and moments spent cherishing what they have for as long as they have it.  It’s all they can do for each other, the only gift they can give that really matters.

Well, almost.  Three days later, Bucky’s on the train heading out of the city, as far away from home as he’s been since his folks moved their family from Indiana eighteen years ago.  He has his bag on his lap, looking miserably out the window, when he feels something pointy in the front pouch of it.  Curious, he unbuttons the compartment and pulls his conscription letter free.  Folded in that is a sheet of paper from Steve’s sketchbook.  _“Buck,”_ a note says in Steve’s neat handwriting.  _“Belated Christmas present.  I know it’s stupid, but it didn’t feel right keeping this here with me.  Whenever things get rough, it’s always been there for us.  For a while I started thinking it’s magic.  Like I said, stupid, but if it brings you any comfort out there…  Then it’s worth believing in.  Stay safe until I see you again.  Love forever, Steve.”_

Bucky pulls out the little toy soldier.  The toy’s old and very tarnished, dented and worn now, but he doesn’t care.  It’s worth more than anything, that and Steve’s note, which he kisses and folds up before putting it back in his bag.  The soldier he keeps out, though, and he holds it tighter than ever.


	10. 1943

It’s Christmas, 1943.

“Get down!”

The shell hits too damn close, and Bucky winces and buries his head under his arms.  The side of the building explodes, and dirt, shards of brick, and snow rain over him.  Larger chunks of debris topple from the remaining wall, and Bucky glances up when he hears an ominous creaking over the ringing in his ears.  The wall’s tipping, breaking, _falling on him._

“Bucky!”

The hundreds of pounds of crushing, pulverizing wreckage isn’t what hits him.  It’s two hundred fifty pounds of muscle, slamming over him and driving him down, protecting him.  The thunder of everything coming down is muted by the ringing sound of bricks striking vibranium, and Bucky squeezes his eyes shut and goes limp under Steve’s six-foot frame and waits for the hellish moment to be over.

Steve lets him up slowly, looking around with narrowed, vigilant eyes for any further attack.  There isn’t one, not right away, though the rapid, echoing staccato of not so distant gunfire means the fight is far from over.  “You alright?” he gasps, looking down on Bucky.

Bucky growls and pushes himself out of the wreckage.  He’s furious.  His temper’s been frayed for weeks, and now he feels like he’s dangling by a thread, dangling over a deep and dark precipice.  War’s been hell but not any hell he ever fathomed.  Lately the offensive hasn’t been going well, and the Howling Commandos have been talking the brunt of the bad missions and the brass’ frustration.  The weather’s been unbearable on top of that, miserably cold as they fight their way across Northern Italy with the rest of the 107th in an attempt to flush the Nazis back.  It feels like every day they’ve faced blustery snow at best or a blizzard at worst, battling the elements as much as they’re battling their enemies.  So that’s been shit.  It’s been one battle after another, one fight after another, and they’re all exhausted, worn down, and in desperate need of a moment’s rest.  There’s no reprieve coming.  Phillips is after them to get this done, and there’s no break, not even today.  Not even on Christmas.

So that’s bothering him something fierce, that they’re trapped here in another firefight instead of taking a well-deserved respite.  However, that’s just a minor misery (like facing a horde of HYDRA in this bombed out village buried under snow can be considered minor, but this is his life now, and his life is far, far from what it was a year ago).  So much more has happened in the last few months that he can’t begin to process.  Needless to say, being captured by HYDRA and spending a few weeks as their _guest_ changed him, and not just because they _did_ things to him.  Something inside him – innocence, maybe, as clichéd as that is – died on that table in Azzano when the little scientist with the beady eyes and the glasses loomed over him and performed his experiments.  Something inside him changed forever when they injected their poison into his body.  He doesn’t remember much about it – nothing other than hazy shadows and cruel hands and pain pain _pain_ – but he knows that they _altered_ him somehow.  The quiet place inside where he _knew_ himself…  He can’t find it so easily anymore.  Everything looks different, wrong, bleaker.  Everything _is_ different.

Steve most of all.

Despite his nightmares now, the darkness inside him born from killing other men and from being captured and tortured, the thing that frightens him the most is Steve.  The moment he opened his eyes and saw Steve leaning over him back there in the scientist’s lab, Steve’s familiar blue eyes, Steve’s face only rounder and healthier than it ever has been…  Honestly Bucky thought he was hallucinating or dreaming.  He spent so much time on that table, dreaming about Steve, that this had to be just another moment he was escaping to the safe place in his mind where Steve was.  Or he died.  It was heaven, and Steve was there, because Steve is an angel, and in heaven Steve is healthy and breathes easily and is as big and strong as he always deserved to be.  But, no, despite all the awful things that little scientist and his men did to him, he didn’t die.  That wasn’t heaven.  And the image of Steve before him, ripping away the straps that held him in place for days, pulling him out of that hell…  It wasn’t a hallucination.  It wasn’t a dream.  It wasn’t heaven.

It was Captain America.  The army made Steve into _Captain America._

Wrapping his head around that is the hardest of all for Bucky.  Steve is big now, bigger than Bucky is even, bigger than most guys.  He’s lithe, a tower of perfectly proportioned muscles, and he’s fast and powerful.  The serum he let the army pump into him took away all of his health issues, _erased_ a lifetime of damage and turmoil like it never existed at all.  Steve’s a soldier, a super soldier, and he got what he wanted.  He found a way to chase Bucky overseas, to be here with him, to save him.  To serve his country and protect innocents.  He’s a hero.

But Bucky’s not sure he’s _Steve_ anymore.  Everything is so screwed up inside him.  He’s angry Steve did something so radical and dangerous and reckless to his body.  He’s so surprised, so hurt (with Steve strong and powerful like this, does he even need Bucky anymore?), so lost and grief-stricken and relieved, too, because if anyone in the world deserves to know endless vitality, it’s Steve.  Bucky feels weightless and twisted around, though, and he’s just not sure.  And that’s not fair, because he _knows_ Steve is Steve.  The same blue eyes are watching him now, teeming with the same worry, the same love.  The same soul is behind them, the brilliant, vibrant soul with which Bucky fell in love ages ago.  Back when they were boys in Brooklyn, miles away from this hell.  A lifetime apart from this place and all of his nightmares.  Those blue eyes are just as they were.

If not for that, Bucky’s sure he’d go crazy.

“Buck?” Steve asks again.  That ridiculous red, white, and blue getup is streaked with mud, and that equally ridiculous shield is covered in ash.  There’s not a dent in it despite having been pounded with tons of collapsing wreckage.  And Steve’s completely fine, despite having been pummeled, too.  That serum in his veins does some amazing stuff, makes him heal faster than should be possible, and if he’s breathing hard now, it’s because he’s worried, not because he’s winded.  “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Bucky grouses, and he finally pulls himself to his feet.  Steve gives him the look, that same look he always did back home when he wasn’t buying whatever bullshit Bucky was selling.  He’s noticed how Bucky’s been suffering with what happened to him at Azzano, with how everything’s changed and how the war’s crushing them down.  His helplessness is like a tangible force beating against them both.  Since Azzano, since being reunited at the army base with the rest of the 107th after Steve rescued them, they’ve hardly been alone together.  Their first kiss was rushed, barely hidden and strangely awkward.  The physical reasons for that were literally in Bucky’s face, as in Steve’s face not six inches below his but even a little above and Steve’s body not this slight thing Bucky could manhandle however he wants (and he wants – he always did) but a wall of immovable muscle.  Steve tastes the same, though, and kisses the same, and that dissolved his uncertainty, that and desperation for Steve after _months_ separation and after convincing himself he’d never see him again.  The kisses since then have been few and far between.  There’s absolutely _zero_ privacy where they are, and it’s even muddier than that because everything’s different and Steve’s his goddamn CO.  They do everything they can _not_ to betray themselves.

Like right now, with Steve’s questioning eyes on him, so filled with love and a frantic need to make whatever’s bothering Bucky right (like he can.  He’s Captain America now, but even he has limits).  Anyone looking at them would see clear as day just how much Steve loves him and not like a childhood friend.  Steve has been always shit for lying.  Bucky was never too good at it either, at least not with Steve.  “I’m fine,” he says again more firmly, trying to keep his emotions in check.  He grabs his sniper rifle and staggers over to Steve.  “Wanna go home.”

 _Home._   Neither of them is sure home exists anymore.  Steve’s got an arm around him before Bucky can stop him, a quick little hug in the middle of a violent skirmish, and then he’s up and running.  Bucky follows him.  The Commandos are ahead, along with the rest of their company of the 107th.  Falsworth turns as they run over, more artillery buzzing overhead and blasting the area from which they just came.  “Captain!” he shouts.  “This isn’t good!”

Steve slides through the snow to crouch beside him.  They’re all tucked behind the side of a building that at this point seems more a slice of swiss cheese than anything that can protect them.  Dugan is blasting away on Betsy, his shotgun that he’s named for some dame back home (or so he claims).  Morita and Dernier are a little further down, unloading their weapons at their enemies, too, but it’s pretty damn obvious the Germans are really well entrenched.  “This whole op is FUBARed,” Jones declares breathlessly.  He wipes blood from his brow.  “We can’t stay here!”

“Where’s the major?” Steve shouts over the din.  Bucky presses to his side like he always does, twisting to get his rifle through the hole in the wall beside them.  Through the drifting curtains of smoke and snow, he can barely see anything.  Punching through and pushing the bastards back is going to be extremely difficult if not impossible.

Jones shakes his head.  “I got him on the radio.”  He’s fiddling with the unit, looking increasingly worried.  “He’s pissed.  What do you want me to tell him?”

Steve raises his shield, plugging half the hole with it and protecting them all from the spray of gunfire.  The second that lets up, Bucky goes back to it, trying to aim in the snow.  His shot is true despite the terrible conditions, and a shadow falls across the way.  Another shadow immediately takes its place.  _Shit._   “We can’t hold this!” Steve shouts.  The _clang clang clang_ of bullets smashing against his shield is deafening.  “We need to fall back!”

Jones relays Steve’s orders over the radio.  Down the way another shell strikes hard, and broken men are thrown into the air.  Bucky winces.  They’re getting absolutely clobbered.  “There’s gotta be serious artillery ahead!” he cries.  “Does HQ know that?”

Morita’s doing what he can with a pair of binoculars.  Between the weather and the wreckage, it’s useless.  “This is the new definition of hell,” he grumbles.  Another shell hits close, and the Commandos take cover.  Bucky grips his rifle tighter.  “We’re not going forward until we shut down those guns!”

Jones swears, holding the headphones of the radio in place as the ground shakes and shudders around them.  “Damn it all to hell…  Cap, they won’t let us fall back!  Orders are to hold our ground!”

Steve’s eyes flash in anger.  “What about the tanks?”

“Twenty minutes out.”

“Damn it,” Dugan hisses.  “We’ll be dead before those assholes get here.”

Steve grabs Jones’ arm.  “Get him back on the line,” he says, calm despite the world blowing apart around them.  “We have to fall back and regroup.  We can’t hold this.  This position is _not_ tenable.  Men are dying left and right out here!”

“I told him, Cap,” Jones gasps.  “I told him!  They don’t care!  He told me to tell you that you’re Captain America!”  He practically spits that in spite for the assholes up the chain.  “Figure it out.”

Despite the hellfire raining down on them, the squad goes quiet.  This is bullshit.  It’s not the first time some idiot higher-up has treated Steve like this, mocked him or used him or denigrated him.  Labeled him a weapon or an answer or a tool.  A meat shield.  A pawn on a chest board.  Steve grits his teeth, glancing among his friends.  They’re all grim and silent.  Dugan’s not so restrained.  “Well, ain’t that sweet of them!  Merry fucking Christmas!”  He reloads his Winchester and goes back to blasting the crap out of anything close.

Steve glances at Bucky, and Bucky can see the doubt and fear in his eyes.  If they stay here, they’re going to get decimated.  They are two hundred strong, two hundred Allied soldiers hiding around this nearly obliterated town just as they are, and who knows how many enemies are ahead with HYDRA guns and tanks and weaponry.  They can’t stay here.

Dernier points and screams something in French.  Bucky doesn’t understand until Morita yells, _“They’re trying to flank us!”_   Bucky scrambles to the left, crawling to keep low, and now he can see the couple of trucks rumbling down the snowy road to the left.  There are hordes of HYDRA surrounding them.  If they cut off their retreat…

Steve’s up on his feet.  “Fall back!” he cries, and his voice rises over the thunder of guns and bombs.  “Everyone, _fall back!_ ”

Without being told, the Commandos split.  They run to the soldiers around them and help them pull out of the hot zone.  Many are wounded.  Getting them out becomes the highest priority.  Organizing a retreat is all but impossible, though, and everything dissolves into chaos.  It’s hard to see anything with the weather, hard to run with the wreckage, and terror stretches seconds to something long and awful.  Bucky grabs a kid who’s partially covered under some rubble.  He’s got a busted leg, so Bucky hauls him up and loops his arm around his shoulders.  The rest of his squad is there to take him as another shell busts up the building to their left.  Debris and thick smoke blind them all.  Bucky’s ears are ringing.  His heart pounds.  The Nazis are destroying their cover, and they’re trying to get behind them to block their escape.  They need to get out now or they’re all going to die.

And he can’t even see where they’re going.

But Steve’s there.  Steve with that stupid goddamn shield of his, a shining star of silver catching all that remains of the daylight as he jumps atop a huge pile of wreckage and raises it high.  It’s red and blue and silver, a beacon to the men scrambling for their lives.  A bright symbol through the murk of snow and smoke.  “This way!” he shouts, standing tall and undaunted.  He points back, holding his shield in front of him, showing them the path to get out.  Leading them.  “Come on!  Come on!  Fall back!”

“Fall back!” Bucky yells.  Black forms move in the snow behind them.  HYDRA is chasing them.  Bucky raises his gun, slipping into the calm of concentration, and takes aim.  A few quick shots drop the closest soldiers, but there are more coming.  More and more and _more._ “Everyone, go now!  _Go!_ ”

Steve reaches down to help a couple soldiers up and over the wall of debris on which he’s standing.  Bucky glances frantically at him – _get down!_ – before whirling back to the enemies flooding their position.  Gunfire ricochets everywhere, striking the piles of brick and toppled buildings, and he dives for cover behind a burnt, mangled car.  Steve’s got his shield up, but he’s turned away, distracted by helping the men around him scramble over the wall of fallen masonry.  HYDRA’s on them.  There are too many, too _goddamn_ many, and they’re targeting Captain America.

Bucky knows what he needs to do.  Despite the mess in his head, the way everything’s screwed up and twisted around and upside down, he _knows_ this.  _This_ is who he is, who he always has been.  _Protect Steve.  Keep Steve safe.  Love Steve._   He sees the soldiers breaching the line of the 107th’s retreat, and he doesn’t even think.  He abandons the car.  He lifts his rifle and fires.  And fires.  And kills.  _And kills._ He’ll kill them all, _every one of them_ , to stop them from hurting Steve.

So he does.  It’s what he always does.  A few seconds later, the line of enemies pointing their guns at Steve are all dead, laying in the muck and snow and debris.  Bucky lowers his gun, the magazine spent.  Steve whirled at the sound of Bucky shooting, and his eyes are wide now, wide with relief, with love, with worry.

With horror.

_“Bucky!”_

He doesn’t even see the man who shoots him.  He’s standing there, exposed with an empty gun, and there’s nothing he or Steve or anyone can do when the bullet rips into his body.  It cuts right through the thick, padded wool of his coat, driving hard and deep into his flank.  There’s a quick burst of agony.  The force of it is enough to drop him.  He hardly feels himself hit the ground.

Wet heat spreads along his side.  He blinks, staring up at the gray sky and the snowflakes falling and the smoke drifting over him.  He can’t hear, nothing beyond the quick, aching beat of his heart.  Funny enough, it doesn’t hurt too bad, like the cold’s gotten into his skin and blood and bones and numbed him to the pain.  That’s okay.  It’s fine.

He blinks and blinks and blinks.  Then he hears Steve.  Then he _sees_ Steve.  Steve’s right over him, face white, eyes teeming with barely restrained tears.  He’s rigid with panic.  “Bucky?  Buck!  Oh, God… No, no, no…  We need a medic here!  Medic!  _Jim!_ ”

Bucky groans, tasting a bitter, metallic warmth in the back of his throat.  Vaguely he realizes it’s blood.  And vaguely he realizes he’s bleeding out in Steve’s arms, that Steve’s holding him and pressing his hands over the gushing wound.  Bucky’s drifting, and everything’s hazy and distant.  That’s okay.  Steve’s got him, so it’s okay.  “Christ Almighty, Buck, you shouldn’t have…  Oh, God…  Hang on.  Hang on!”

“What happened?”

“Aw, hell, Barnes!”

“We need sulfa!  Bandages!”

Bucky chokes as things are pushed against the wound, cloth and more hands and powder.  Now it hurts.  It hurts bad.  He blinks and blinks some more, tears slipping from his eyes and down his temples.  It takes a lot, but he focuses, sees Steve again.  Steve’s eyes are wet, too, still so big and blue and beautiful.  His helmet’s off, blond hair soaked in sweat and sticking up all over, and Bucky wants to reach up to smooth it down.  Instead he barely gets a hand curled in Steve’s uniform.  Steve grabs it tight.  “Bucky.”  Steve’s voice cracks.  “Bucky, Bucky…  Gonna get you out of here.  Just hold on.  Hold on!”

Bucky moans.  “Didn’t tell you…”

“What?” Steve gasps.

“Lost it.”

“Don’t talk!  Jim, what do we–”

“He’ll be okay if we can get him out of here.  It’s bleeding pretty bad, but I don’t think it hit anything vital.”

“We gotta move, Cap!  Right now!”

“Took it,” Bucky mumbles.  “Took it…  At Azzano.  HYDRA did.”

“What?”  Steve shakes his head, desperate and panicked.  Tears slip from his eyes.  His ungloved hand is brushing Bucky’s hair back from his sweaty forehead.  It feels so good.  “What they’d take, Buck?”

“It’s Christmas…  Wanted to give it back.  Your turn to have it.”  Bucky gasps, fighting for every breath.  “Guess it doesn’t matter.  We’re the toy soldiers now, huh?”

Steve’s face fractures.  For a long moment, he does nothing but stare at Bucky, and their eyes hold fast and true to each other.  Bucky smiles with all the strength he has left.  Steve smiles back through his tears, rubbing his thumb over Bucky’s cheek.  He leans down and pulls Bucky close and kisses his forehead hard, frantically, pouring every desperate bit of love through it.  Then he’s standing and pulling his shield from his back.  “Get him out of here,” he barks to the rest of the Commandos.  His voice is rough, wrong with grief and anger.  “You hear me?  Get him out!  Get everyone out!  Hurry!”

“Rogers, what the hell are you–”

“Just go!  _Go!_ ”

Steve’s gone.  Bucky reaches for him, but he’s not there.  The others are moving him, getting him onto a litter.  They shout to each other, but Bucky can’t make out the words.  He can’t make out much of anything.  He blinks one more time, trying to hang on, but he can’t.  The last thing he sees is the shield, bright and powerful, as Steve charges into the fray, as he cuts down the soldiers hurting them, as he covers their retreat.

As Captain America fights to protect them all like a one-man army.


	11. 1944

It’s Christmas, 1944.

At least this year it’s not on the frontlines.  In fact, they’re in London, and while things are fairly bleak and austere with entire sections of the city bombed out and abandoned, it’s far better than how Bucky spent the holiday last year.  Most of last year’s a blur, the battle and then surgery and then a week of recovering in an army hospital.  It feels like a lifetime ago, even if his side still spasms sometimes from the injury.  He’s got a hell of a scar to mark the spot.  Merry Christmas.

Anyway, this year things are calm.  Quiet.  The Commandos have been somewhat furloughed (somewhat – they’re not technically on leave, but they’re off duty for the most part, and that equates to the first and only break they’ve had after nearly eighteen months of combat).  Steve’s been dealing with the brass an awful lot.  The war’s taken a definite turn, given Operation Overlord is six months behind them.  As the Axis starts to topple, HYDRA is breaking away from the Third Reich more and more, and it’s becoming obvious they’re building toward something with their latest moves.  Steve’s been working with Stark and Carter, pulling intel from everywhere they can to try and track down Arnim Zola.  _Zola._   Just hearing that name makes Bucky uncomfortable.  The darkness HYDRA put inside him is much quieter now, more like a scar than the open wound it was last year at this time, but knowing they need to get a hold of that snake and get information from him puts Bucky really ill at ease.

That’s neither here nor there tonight, though.  The barracks are pretty empty with most the other soldiers home for the holidays, and it’s nice to have some space.  The Commandos are alone in the mess, all save Steve who’s still busy with another meeting with the brass.  Bucky’s pushing his potatoes around his dinner plate.  The cooks scrounged up enough meat to make a pretty nice and hearty stew.  It should be a treat, to eat something savory and delicious on Christmas Eve, and it is.  It definitely is.  But he’s so damn spent, and he’s hardly seen Steve at all the last few days, and he feels weary down to his bones.

“You gonna eat that?” Dum Dum asks, eyeing Bucky’s half-full plate.

Bucky glances at him with half a knowing grin.  “Have at it.”  He shoves the plate across the table, and Dugan digs in with glee.  Then Bucky grimaces.  “Unless we didn’t save any for Steve.  He’s coming.”

“Is he?”  Falsworth is reading a letter, probably another one from home.  He puffs on his cigarette as he does.  He’s been engrossed in letters lately.  “Didn’t seem like he’d get away.  Phillips was on a rampage.”

Bucky grimaces harder.  Phillips can be such a damn ornery, old asshole when it suits him.  The guy’s a great commander, pragmatic and smart, but he tolerates no bullshit, and he’s always eager to vent his displeasure on Steve because he knows Steve can take it.  That seems to be the way a lot of the brass treats Steve: as someone who can take the hits.  It pisses Bucky off now as much as it did last year, but he tries to hide it.  He also tries to hide his frustration over the fact that Steve’s spending Christmas Eve in a meeting instead of having dinner.  That’s not goddamn fair, not to Steve and not to him.  He wants to be with Steve on Christmas, even if it’s under the guise of being friends and colleagues rather than lovers.  Having to take what he can get sours his mood, but when he can’t even have that, it’s a struggle to even pretend to be okay.

Plus…  Well, he just feels ill at ease.  He can’t explain it.  Things are better.  The Commandos, these disparate men who’ve inexplicably formed a family around Steve and Bucky, have struck hard and sent the bad guys running.  Captain America is the scourge of the Axis, of the Third Reich, of the Red Skull.  Steve doesn’t care for all the pomp and celebrity that seems to follow his exploits, but Bucky knows it’s doing morale a world of good.  It’s done him good, too.  The last few months, it certainly feels like they’ve started to win and exterminate HYDRA from Europe.  If they can get a handle on Zola, this could be the death knell, the nail in Johann Schmidt’s coffin.  The end of HYDRA.  God, just thinking about that seems too good to be true.  The war ending.

_Going home._

He can’t imagine it.  By this time last year, he convinced himself that home doesn’t exist anymore.  He’s a tad more optimistic now, but even still he can’t picture what it would be like going back to Brooklyn.  The people they know.  Their old haunts and jobs.  Their old apartment.  And part of him knows it won’t be that simple.  Steve’s a hero now.  He’s Captain America.  He’s not little Steve Rogers the artist who’s sick all the time and fighting bullies in backstreet alleys and struggling to pay his bills.  Can Steve even go back?  Does the army _own_ him?  Is he the property of SSR or the government?  Bucky has no idea.  The end of the war seems like this huge unknown.  And even if he could figure that out, he doesn’t, because acknowledging that this could be over, that this may be their _last_ Christmas in hell…  It’s too much to hope for.

So he’s anxious and uncertain.  If war’s taught him anything it’s that things can and will get worse.  He’s waiting for that, because life seems good right now.  Nice food.  Nice company.  They’re all healthy and no worse for the wear despite the rough and dangerous year.  For some reason, as he sits there listening to Jones and Dernier chat in French, to Dugan and Morita bickering again about some stupid thing, watching Falsworth smoke and think about home, he thinks about Father O’Malley.  _“Do not take what you have for granted.  Cherish togetherness with God’s praise.”_   He’s even less certain God exists now than he was when he realized he was in love with his best friend.  Out here there’s evil, men wearing red faces and plotting diabolical plans, doctors and scientists who use knowledge and wisdom to cause harm, racism and prejudice and hatred that runs so strong it poisons everything it touches.  He’s seen men slaughter men, men torture men, men imprison men.  He’s seen concentration and prison camps.  If God is watching over earth, He’s doing a poor job keeping the peace of late.

Still, that saying of old Father O’Malley’s sticks in his head.  _Cherish togetherness._   If they have nothing else, they have that.

The doors to the mess open, and in walks Steve.  Bucky jerks out of his daze as he sees him.  Steve looks tired.  He always looks tired now, older and sagging just a bit like he’s carrying the weight of the world.  In some ways, he is.  Bucky puts on a smile, though, because Steve doesn’t need to see him maudlin on Christmas.  It’s not too hard to turn on the charm, because Steve looks damn good in that uniform.  For all the bad of the last two years, that’s one of the (many) perks of him becoming a soldier.

“Heya, Cap!” Dugan shouts.  He pats the empty seat between him and Falsworth, the one across from Bucky.  “Pull up a chair.  Saved you some grub.”

Steve dons a grin too and plops down with his men.  “Thanks.  Could eat a horse.”  Jones pushes the plate toward him and a huge hunk of bread, and Dernier pours him a glass of wine from one of the bottles on the table.  Steve’s eyes widen.  “Where in the world did you guys get that?”

“Falsworth knows a guy who knows a guy,” Morita says, passing Steve the glass before getting another for himself.  “Sometimes he is capable of breaking the rules.”

Falsworth balks.  “When the situation merits it.”  He raises his own glass.  “Merry Christmas, Captain.”

Dugan lifts his, too, and soon the rest of the Commandos are following suit, raising the remaining wine for a solemn toast.  “Merry Christmas!” Dum Dum says.  “To the fact that we survived another year of this shitstorm.”

“And to all the guys who didn’t,” adds Jones, lips lifted in a sad smile.  Bucky thinks about that, about the friends they don’t have anymore.  About the comrades who didn’t come back from their many missions, the ones who laid down their lives for their country.  How quiet and desolate Brooklyn must be now, with their schoolmates overseas or in their graves.  Empty dance halls and empty shops and empty churches.  The fact that they’re alone in the mess only makes that image more poignant, and Bucky sips his wine and tries not to think any more.

“So what are they saying, Cap?” Morita asks after the quiet goes on too long.

Steve raises his head where he’s been buried in his food.  “Stark’s real close on busting the HYDRA cipher,” he says after chewing.  “Once he does that, we can start trying to intercept their messages.  Figure out where Zola is and how to get to him.”

“Why not go directly for Schmidt?” Falsworth asks.  “Cut out their heart?”

Steve shakes his head.  “Phillips thinks we have a better chance of getting Zola to talk.  He might be right.  Whatever Schmidt is now, he’s not human.”  Bucky stiffens at that.  He was right there at Steve’s side in Azzano when the Red Skull ripped off his mask and revealed his true colors, but that’s not what scared him the most.  It was Zola, standing next to his master, staring right back at Bucky.  That’s another thing that keeps him awake sometimes.  _Monsters masquerading as men._   Steve sighs.  “The guy’s crazy, but he’s not stupid.  I’m sure he’s got contingencies in place so that if we somehow could take him out, it might not matter.”

That gives the Commandos pause, the breadth of the problem still looming before them.  Maybe things are better, and the war effort is taking a turn for the positive, but there’s a great deal left to face.  This is why Bucky can’t think about going home.  It’s another Christmas, another winter, and the war’s not over, and he’s not certain it ever will be.

The conversation turns to lighter things, scuttlebutt and tall tales and topics that are more frivolous and fun.  Bucky laughs along with the guys and tries to forget, drinking his wine and throwing in his two cents as the Commandos reminisce about Christmases past.  It’s hard to remember sometimes that all of them had lives before this.  They take turns around the table, talking about their favorite holiday traditions, their families, their memories.  Bucky loses himself in it.

“How old were you, Buck?” Steve asks, leaning back in his chair.  “That year you put the frog in Becca’s present?”

“Thirteen maybe?  I dunno.  And it was _your_ idea.”

Steve grins.  “Your dad screamed like a girl.”

Pop had.  It was glorious.  Bucky downs the rest of his wine.  “You guys got no idea how hard it was to find a frog in New York City in the middle of winter.”

Dugan laughs.  “How did you?”

Bucky shrugs.  “One of my friends had an older brother in college learning to be a doctor.  He slipped me the goods.”

“Yeah, but I had to keep the thing at my place,” Steve says.  “For days.  And it _sang._   Mom kept asking me what the noise was.  Think it was hard to find a frog?  Imagine how hard it was to come up with a story for why the box under my bed was howling.”

“I thought frogs went ribbit or some shit?” Jones says with a chuckle.

“Not this one.  This one preferred arias.”  They all laugh.  Steve points at Bucky.  “You owed me so bad for that.”

Bucky smirked, feeling a little tipsy.  “I paid you back good,” he says with a wink, teasingly, maybe a little too flirtatiously because Steve actually misses a beat, eyes widening.  Bucky hurries to cover.  “Like when I stole that old bottle of moonshine.  Remember that?  That wasn’t long after the frog.  A couple years?”

That gets Steve back into the conversation with more poise.  “More than that.  Think I was sixteen.  And that wasn’t exactly paying me back.  I spent all of Christmas puking.  And both our moms nearly had our hides.”

Dugan sets his empty glass down and reaches for the bottle.  There’s nothing left, and he frowns.  “You two sure sound like quite the pair growing up,” he comments.  “Any particular favorite Christmas memories where you weren’t being a couple of punks?”

Boldly, Steve looks right at Bucky.  If Bucky didn’t know it’s impossible, he’d think Steve’s a little buzzed, too.  “All of them,” Steve answers, sure and steady.  Something warm blooms inside Bucky, and that’s not the wine.  Steve’s stare is intense, heated, so brightly blue and unwavering.  “As long as we were together, that was all that mattered.”

The rest of the conversation falls away.  If the other Commandos notice the deeper meaning under Steve’s words, they don’t act on it.  And Steve doesn’t really back down, stealing look after look like he doesn’t care who’s watching.  Bucky can practically feel how much he wants to let it all go right now, to be _them_ again like they always were before the war.  The need aches inside him, too.  God, it’s been hard lying and pretending and keeping up this façade.  But aside from those looks, that promise – _as long as we’re together_ – that’s strong between them, there can’t be anything else.

Eventually they clean up the remains of their meal.  The empty wine bottles go into the trash, and their plates go back to the kitchen.  The Commandos wander to the barracks, talking, joking, and laughing as loud as they want.  Dugan is bellowing some old Irish song about Saint Nick and Steve laughing along with his out of tune rendition.  Morita is squabbling with Dernier now and Gabe’s struggling to translate the debate.  Even Falsworth joins in, his letters back in his coat and a wry smile back on his face as he remarks how bloody stupid they all are.  It doesn’t matter if they are.  There’s hardly anyone around, and no one’s enforcing military decorum.  It’s Christmas, and their CO is giving them a night off.  Their CO is as embroiled in the camaraderie and revelry as the rest of them, and they’ve earned it.  They’ve earned this.

They get to their sections of the barracks.  As special ops under Captain America, they’ve been afforded slightly nicer rooms, but they’re still doubling up in bunks not much bigger than closets.  Except for Steve, that is, and Falsworth.  As officers, they’re allotted their own rooms, again not larger than what’s strictly necessary for a bed and a desk.  But it’s something.  A little privacy.  Bucky has to admit he’s a little jealous.

And a little confused as their team loiters around the hallway like no one can remember where they’re sleeping.  They’re not that drunk.  Steve glances amongst them, trying to figure it out.  “Something up?” he asks with a crooked smile.

“Sergeant Barnes,” Dugan says, turning to Bucky.  “Maybe you should debrief with the captain in his quarters.”

That doesn’t make any sense.  He and Steve have hardly been together for days.  He has nothing to report to Steve, nothing worthwhile at any rate, and this isn’t exactly the time.  “What?”

“Right now,” Jones added.  “If it pleases you.”  He glances at Steve with the corner of his mouth curled in a suppressed smile.  “Sir.”

Steve looks as confused as Bucky feels.  “What’s…”

The team comes closer.  Dugan drops his voice after glancing around.  “We’ll cover for you.”

Bucky’s heart stops cold in his chest.  _Holy hell._ They’re going to…  _They know._ Despite how careful he and Steve have been, how they’ve tried for weeks and _months_ to hide their relationship…  _Oh, no.  No, no, please…_

The jolt of fear doesn’t last long, though, turning into euphoria and relief when he catches Dugan’s knowing grin and Falsworth’s exasperated eyes and Jones’ gentle nod.  Dernier’s smiling like a loon and Morita’s nervously fidgeting like they’re wasting valuable time.  They’re waiting, and Bucky understands what they’re doing.  What they’re offering _._

Steve doesn’t get it though.  Goddamn it.  He’s so damn dense sometimes.  “C-cover?” he stammers.  “We don’t–”

Dugan rolls his eyes dramatically.  “Lord, Rogers.  You stupid little shit.  Do you really think we don’t know?”  Steve shifts his weight nervously, glancing at Bucky, but Bucky’s grinning like a loon and fighting not to roll his eyes, too.  Dugan smirks and takes another step closer, lowering his tone further.  “After living on top of each other for a year and a half, you think we couldn’t figure it out?  We’re not dumb.  The way you two assholes are pining for each other all the time?”

“The way Buck’s been moping every time you’re not around?” Jones adds.  _“Every_ time?”

“Or the way Cap was glued to Barnes’ hospital bed last year,” Morita throws in.  He’s standing back a bit, keeping a look-out down the hallway.  He glances at Bucky.  “Couldn’t pry him away after you got shot.  It was annoying.”

Smugly Dugan folds his arms over his chest.  “Or how Cap single-handedly took out that entire company of HYDRA while we got you out?”

Falsworth says, “And the way you two are constantly throwing yourselves into danger to protect each other.  Case in point.  You got yourself shot to save him, and he ran off like a lunatic to save you.  That was just one of many times we all wanted to clobber you both for being so damn stupid.”  Dernier nods in agreement to that, muttering something in French but smiling.  Falsworth shakes his head.  “Bloody well aggravating is what it is.  Be easier to let the Nazis mow you both down.”

“You need this,” Dugan whispers.  “We can all see it.  And you deserve it.  Both of you.  So _go._   We’ll cover for you tonight.  Keep everyone else away if anyone comes asking.”  His smirk softens, and he grasps Steve’s shoulder.  “Merry Christmas.”

The hallway’s quiet a long moment.  Steve’s glancing among the Commandos again, their friends, their _family_ , and Bucky swears his eyes glisten wetly a second.  Dugan offers up a jaunty salute, but Steve dispenses with that, grabbing the other man in a tight hug.  “Oh, Christ,” Dugan groans, flushing with embarrassment, but he hugs right back, squeezing Steve hard.  Jones throws an arm around Bucky’s shoulders, shaking him with a ridiculous grin on his face.  Bucky’s heart is pounding with so much.  Joy.  Relief.  Love.

“Go, you morons,” Falsworth chides.  “Hurry the hell up!”

They do.  They rush inside Steve’s quarters.  Steve locks the door, but he barely manages to turn around before Bucky’s all over him, kissing him breathless.  It’s been so long, _so long,_ since they’ve done this, since they had more than stolen kisses and sneaky caresses that were quick and unsatisfying and done with guilt shading every moment.  This is freedom.  Bucky kisses into Steve’s mouth, feasting like a man who’s been starving.  His senses come to life, bursting with pleasure and a sweet affirmation, as he tastes Steve, _knows_ Steve, Steve the way he always has been.

Hands fumble at buttons and zippers.  Steve’s uniform jacket hits the floor of the room with a clank, and Bucky’s is soon to follow.  Shoes are sloppily kicked off.  Pants falls and puddle at their ankles, tripping them as they cling to each other.  It’s hard to undress with their mouths locked together, and they’re laughing and winded and stumbling to Steve’s bed.  Bucky ends up on his back, Steve manhandling him now, and Steve stops kissing him to lean up and look down.  He’s beautiful, so beautiful, like this with this incredible new body that puts perfection to shame, that lets him do all these amazing things he never could before.  He was beautiful before, too, with the smaller, sicker body.  Here, back home, in Bucky’s memories with all that fire in his eyes and all that strength in his heart.  He’s _beautiful_.

Steve’s the one who says it though.  “You’re beautiful, Buck.  So gorgeous.”  He sweeps his thumb down Bucky’s cheek.  “You know that?  Always have been.”

“Steve–”

“You’re the only part of me that matters.  You don’t even know–”

“I love you,” Bucky murmurs.  His heart’s soaring with it, high and alive in a way it hasn’t been for ages.  Not since the last Christmas at home, where they laid in their bed all day and made love and pretended like there was no war coming to separate them.  They can’t pretend here.  The war is all around them.  The war _made_ Steve what he is now.  Big.  Strong.  A hero.  _Captain America._

No.  He’s still Steve.  Bucky’s Steve.  Bucky can’t find the words he wants to say and for the first time in forever, he feels frightened of how strongly he feels.  He grasps Steve’s face, sweeps his thumb over Steve’s lower lip.  He gasps, blinks back tears, pulls Steve close until their lips are brushing against each other and all he can see is the deep blue of Steve’s eyes.  “I love you so much.  I – I can’t…  I need–”

“I know,” Steve answers in a strained whisper.  “I love you, too.”  He reaches over to shut off the lamp, dipping back down to capture Bucky’s mouth in another searing kiss.  Then he works his way down Bucky’s throat as Bucky tips his head back, down Bucky’s chest, lightly working his lips over scars old and new, worshipping with reverent tenderness.  Cherishing.

They don’t talk again.  There’s no need to.  Steve holds him close, kisses him until there’s no pain, until there _can’t_ be any pain.  No pain, no fear, no doubt.  Until they’re _home_ right where they are.  And he slides his hand into Bucky’s undershorts, touches him, brings him higher and higher, and Bucky loses himself completely.  He feels like he’s falling, but Steve’s there.  Steve will catch him.


	12. And then...

Steve doesn’t catch him.

He falls.  He falls from Steve, from a train speeding fast through the mountains and snow and ice.  He falls and falls until he doesn’t know where he is, who he is.  Until there are only harsh hands and cruel smiles, until he’s back in a nightmare he thought he escaped.  He’s strapped again to a table with a monster masquerading as a man looming over him.  Beady eyes and spectacles and a round, seemingly innocuous face.  The demon from his dreams.  He screams and struggles and wails for Steve, but Steve never comes.

The man smiles.  _“Calm down, Sergeant Barnes.  Captain America can’t protect you here.”_   He screams harder as they force him down and thrust cloth in his mouth.  He screams and screams and fights to hang on, but in the end, he can’t.  He never can.  They torture him, poison him, drill metal into his body and rip his memories from his mind.  One by one, they’re _all_ stripped away, everything he cherishes.  He tries to cling to them – _Ma and Pop and Becca and the Commandos and Steve and Steve’s blue eyes and Steve’s fingers and Steve’s voice when he laughs when he cries when he moans under his hands and Steve’s smile and Steve Steve Steve_ – until there’s nothing left but anger and agony.  He fights to hang on, but he can’t.  _He never can._ Their machines burn his brain until all he knows is nothing, until he’s bleeding his life away.  Until he’s someone else, something else.  Until the darkness they put in him consumes _everything._

The man keeps smiling.  _“You’re to be the new fist of HYDRA, Sergeant Barnes.”_

He’s the monster now.  He falls.  He sleeps.

They wake him when they need him.

It’s Christmas, 1958.  The night is quiet, peaceful.  The Winter Soldier stands atop a building in Moscow.  The Winter Soldier is holding a sniper rifle.  The Winter Soldier is ready.  The Winter Soldier is all there is.

The snow falls, coating thick in his dark hair like stars, and he narrows his eyes.  The convoy is coming down the road, heading towards the Kremlin.  He doesn’t know who’s inside the cars.  It doesn’t matter.  This is his mission.

He sights down his rifle and pulls the trigger.

 _“Molodets, soldat,”_ they say when he comes back with his directives completed and his targets neutralized.  Then he falls again, back into the ice.  He sleeps.  He sleeps and he dreams of nothing.

It’s Christmas, 1963.  A hospital burns in Kiev.  He set fire to it.  Over the last year, he’s done this dozens of times, though he barely remembers beyond the sense of the heat and the knowledge that he’s accomplished his goal.  He’s walking away now, the flames licking high in the sky behind him.  There are screams in the air, high-pitched and desperate.  People trapped in the fire.  People burning with the building.  People dying.  He doesn’t stop, not even as a woman he shot earlier grabs at his leg as he passes.  She begs him for help, her chest and face covered in red, but he doesn’t help her.  He breaks her neck.  Blood gets on his metal arm, gets into the plates of it.  His handlers will not be pleased.

They are not.  Still, after the cleaning, after the machine, he is given his reward.  A gift.  _“Molodets, soldat.”_ They put him back in his cage, in the tube, and put him to sleep.  He falls down deep.  He still doesn’t dream.

It’s Christmas, 1971.  He leads a company of soldiers to steal weapons from research lab in Los Angeles.  The fight is fast, brutal, their enemies lulled into complacency by the holiday.  It’s more an extermination than a battle.  When it’s over, there is nothing but a room full of dead guards and workers and a toppled Christmas tree.  Ornaments crunch under his boots as he walks through the wreckage, checking for survivors.  His gun fires in short bursts, finishing any he finds.  In the end, he walks out with what he was sent to collect and returns home to Russia.

_That’s not my home._

_“Molodets, soldat,”_ his handler praises, taking the technology he extracted.  His handler smiles.

He does not smile back.  He eats.  He is trained.  He goes back to sleep.  This time he dreams, though it’s hazy and vague.  He dreams of a green tree in a nice apartment, one that smells strongly of pine, and a young man with floppy blond hair and blue eyes hanging ornaments on it.  _“This is a real nice one, Buck,”_ the young man says.  There’s tinsel stuck to the front of the young man’s sweater.  He feels himself reach a hand forward, plucking it from the fuzz of wool, and throwing it onto the young man.  There’s a smile, a beautiful one, that makes him _feel_ beyond the pain, beyond the haze in his head.  _“Whatya doin’?”_   The young man tries to wipe the tinsel away with a giggle, but he’s grabbing more and piling it onto his head.  They’re both laughing.  _“Buck!”_

He tugs the young man closer, kisses him, loves him.  Makes love to him on an old couch, the young man’s skinny legs tight around him as he rocks inside him and carries them both to release.  He doesn’t know his name or who he is, but he knows that this is right.  This boy is someone special.  He knows.  _This is my home._

When he wakes up again, they punish him for dreaming.

It’s Christmas, 1973.  He’s stealing weapons in the Middle East.  Murdering dignitaries.  Fighting.  Always fighting.  Mission parameters.  _Sanction.  Extract._   He comes home, and they praise him though he feels no satisfaction in his work.  _“Molodets, soldat,”_ they say.  _“Molodets.”_

He feels nothing at all.

It’s Christmas, 1976.  1979.  1984.  1988.  Time passes without his knowing, without his care.  Missions come, one after another, and he is ruthless.  He does not think.  He does not feel.  He is a machine.  He is their weapon, their tool.  The new fist of HYDRA.  _The Winter Soldier._

They always make him sleep when they’re through with him.  He fears his dreams.

 _“Bucky, don’t leave me.”_   He knows that voice.  When he sleeps, things blur and shift, and he can’t tell if he’s remembering something or not.  His handlers tell him he cannot remember, and he knows well that looking into the fog in his head means punishment.  The machines.  Beatings.  Torture.  He can’t dream, can’t think, so he tries to ignore it.

But he knows that voice.  _“Bucky, please…  Please…  Hang on.  Don’t leave me.  It’s Christmas, Buck.  You gotta wake up.  No dying on Christmas, remember?  You told me that when I was sick, so I’m telling you now.  You’re not leaving me.  I’m right here.  I’m not going.  You hear me?  Come back to me, Buck.  Please.”_

He doesn’t know who’s calling to him or why.  Vague recollections of that same young man, only bigger, drift through his dreams.  Same blue eyes, same blond hair.  Same smile.  He thinks he’s waking up – _I got shot in the side_ – and the young man’s there, sitting at his bedside, sobbing in relief.  _“Oh, thank God.  Thank God, Buck.  I love you…”_

They wake him.  There’s a name on his lips, a name he never even says, but they know.  And they wipe him clean, start over, _burn him alive._

It’s Christmas, 1991.  To be exact, it’s December 16th.  He sanctions.  He extracts.  There’s a splinter of something in his mind, words his target says.  “Sergeant Barnes?”  He doesn’t know who that is.  He kills the man anyway.

_“Molodets, soldat.”_

They freeze him again after another mission is completed.  He sleeps.  He dreams of a young, suave man with a black mustache and black hair, with money oozing out of him.  The man is laughing with the young man he knows, and they’re all together in a bar somewhere.  Laughing and drinking and having a good time.  His friends.  His family.

Then he dreams of the young man with the blue eyes and blond hair, of pinning him against the bar outside in the shadows of the alley.  With the hum of music behind them, he kisses the young man breathless.  _“Buck, geez, what the hell’s gotten into you?”_ the young man laughs into his lips.  _“Drink too much?”_   He doesn’t know and he doesn’t care, wiggling a hand between them to stroke the other through his pants, and the young man dissolves into a fit of moans and whimpers and pleas.  _“Bucky, God…”_

They wake him again and again.  Every time, they put him in the machine.  Every time, they pump electricity through his head to clean his mind.  Every time, they burn him until they think he’s blank and ready for conditioning.

No matter what they do, though, they can’t burn that man from his mind.

It’s Christmas, 2013.  The Winter Soldier is given to new handlers, to an old man with ginger hair, weathered skin, and shrewd, vicious eyes.  The new face of HYDRA.  He dresses in a nice suit rather than a military uniform.  Things are very different, people and technology, and he doesn’t recognize anything or anyone.  The older man treats him cruelly.  This man commands SHIELD, and he has other cruel men at his bidding.  They all call him the Asset and treat him as nothing more or less than that.  A tool to reshape the world.

He begins his service that spring, is sent to assassinate the Director of SHIELD on the old man’s orders.  The mission is not without complications.  The SHIELD Director is smart, clever, and resilient, and a skirmish on the streets of Washington, DC results in failure.  He is forced to chase the man down, and for a while it proves difficult.  The Winter Soldier is ruthless, though, and unstoppable.  He tracks his target to an apartment in a nice brownstone.

The rifle’s weight is nothing.  He falls again, this time in concentration, and pulls the trigger three times.  The shots are powerful enough to punch right into the apartment and cut his target down.  He pauses a moment to ensure the kill, and he sees another man through the sight of his gun.  A man with blond hair and blue eyes who’s frantically trying to save his target.  There’s nothing the blond man can do.  The wounds are mortal; he knows how to kill.  He turns to run.

The man runs after him.

It’s a crazy flight across rooftops, the man chasing him through the buildings below.  The man is fast, so fast, and capable of keeping pace.  He knows that’s unusual, disturbing even.  What’s more disturbing is the feeling that the man is right behind him as he jumps down to a lower roof.  The sound of metal rings through the air.  He turns and catches the shield – _the shield_ – coming toward him, catches it with his metal arm and flings it back.  The blond man looks surprised too, and he takes that moment to escape.

It’s not the last time he sees him.

The old man sends him after the young man, the man and the woman with him, and orders him to kill them.  He attacks with brutal efficiency, locating the man and the woman and a third, irrelevant distraction on the causeway.  After dispensing with the young man and his shield, he sends his support to deal with him while he chases down the woman.  She’s not as easy to take down as she should be.  She damages his arm and flees.  He pursues, finds her, shoots her.  Targets her.  Prepares for the kill.

The young man comes to fight him.

It’s fast, violent, filled with quick blows and lightning reflexes.  The way the man fights is familiar, though he can say with certainly he has never faced him in combat before.  They are evenly matched, the blond man with the shield and him, and he can’t get an edge.  He wields guns, knives, the man’s shield itself, but he can’t bring him down.

And then the man gets an advantage, grabs him, flips him, and his face mask clatters away…

The man stands there, staring at him with a peculiar look on his face.  He stares back.  Blond hair.  Blue eyes.  “Bucky?”

 _Bucky._   He doesn’t understand.  “Who the hell is Bucky?”

Needless to say, he fails in his mission.

When he returns to base, the old man is not pleased.  They sit him in the chair, in the machine, and speak about him as though he’s not there.  He’s not.  He’s in his head, inside the blankness.  The man on the street.  The young man with the shield with a star on it.  Blond hair.  Blue eyes.  Blond hair and blue eyes that he _knows,_ that he’s dreamed about.  With him, beside him, _inside him_ , all over him.  There’s something growing within, struggling free from the torture and the programming.  Lights splitting the darkness.  It feels familiar, true, right.  Intrinsic to who he is. 

He’s falling from a train.  He’s falling and falling.  _Falling._

_Steve tried to catch me._

The old man is irritated.  He strikes hard.  He wants a mission report.  The Winter Soldier has none to give, has nothing at all, save for one question.  “That man on the bridge,” he murmurs.  “Who was he?”

“You met him earlier this week on another assignment.”

 _No._   There’s more to it than that.  Much more.  A kid with those same blue eyes and that same blond hair, running through streets.  _“Bucky, you can’t catch me!”_   A smaller man, sitting beside him at the library, looking around with a mixture of horror and laughter twisting up his face.  _“Buck, geez, shut up!  They’re gonna throw us out of here, you asshole!”_   That same smaller man, wriggling underneath him with desperate hands and kiss-swollen lips, seemingly so fragile but stronger than anything.  _“Bucky, come on.  I need you.”_   And that same man, bigger, big like he was on the bridge, with a sweet smile as he leans over him.  _“Merry Christmas, Buck.  I love you.”_

He can’t hang onto any of that, not for more than a second.  It’s water slipping through his grasping fingers.  But he knows it’s real.  Tears burn his eyes.  He’s forgotten how to feel, how to cry, how to love, but he _knows_ , too, that that’s what this is.  _Love._ They’ve forced it down, beaten it and suppressed it, but it comes out with hesitant hope.  “I knew him,” he whispers.

The old man sits and looks at him not unkindly.  For a moment, for one blissful _second,_ he wonders if they’ll answer his question.  If they’ll tell him who the young man is, who _he_ is.  But they don’t.  “Your work has been a gift to mankind.  You shaped the century, and I need you to do it one more time.”  He goes on about duty and freedom.  None of that matters.

Nothing beyond the man on the bridge.  “But I knew him.”

They don’t let him remember.  They prep him, wipe him, start over.  He’s back in the machine.  He hears himself screaming.  He’s screaming and screaming because they’re taking the man away.  They’re taking him away.

He can’t stop them.

Later he’s on a flying fortress, a helicarrier, and his mission is to ensure these massive gunboats launch, that no one stops HYDRA from finally achieving complete control.  A man with a shield, with blue eyes and a star on his chest, is there.  He stands between this man and his goal, and he doesn’t think, doesn’t feel, doesn’t know anything.  “People are gonna die, Buck.  I can’t let that happen.”  The man with the shield calls him Buck.  He’s wearing a helmet with an A on it – _Captain America, enhanced speed, strength, and constitution.  Enhanced healing factor.  Enhanced intelligence.  Enemy.  Eliminate him_ – and he knows this man has blond hair, though he’s certain he’s never met him before.  “Please don’t make me do this.”

They fight.

In the end, he fails his mission.  Almost.

The man’s badly hurt.  Shot three times.  Beaten.  He keeps getting up, though, keeps fighting, keeps trying to save _him_ even though the world is falling apart around them _._   Keeps calling him Bucky.  “Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.”

_“Kind of a mouthful.”_

_“What’s your name?”_

_“Steve.  Steven Grant Rogers.”_

“Shut up!”

The man does have blond hair.  It’s dark and thick with sweat as he pulls that stupid helmet off.  “I’m not gonna fight you,” he slurs.  He drops the shield and it falls through the floor, down into the water below.  “You’re my–”

Friend.  Lover. _“The only part of me that matters.  You don’t even know–”_

_“I love you.”_

He can’t stand it, rushes the man with the blond hair and the blue eyes, calls him his mission because that’s safer, easier, what he _knows_ (even though he doesn’t know, not anything.  Not anymore).  He pins him and stops him and beats him because this is who is he, what he’s meant to do.  He’s the Winter Soldier, and he needs to complete his mission.

“Then finish it,” the blond man slurs, “’cause I’m with you till the end of the line.”

_The end of the line._

The man falls.  He watches, horrified and lost, but then he jumps in after him.

_“He needs you, James.  You’re all he has.  Please don’t leave him.  Please protect him.”_

He finds the man in the water.  Pulls him from the river.  Drags him to shore.  Lays him there and looks down on him.  On the bruised face, the plush lips, the shape of his jaw and the way his nose slopes and his eyebrows and hair and everything about him.  On the pull inside him, a promise he doesn’t remember making to someone he doesn’t know anymore.  On this _need_ to make sure this man – Captain America – is safe.  _Not Captain America.  Steve._

Confused and frightened, he walks away.

He doesn’t fall again.  No, he runs.  He’s on his own for the first time that he can remember.  No handlers.  No mission.  No machine or cage or ice.  He’s free.  And he sees things.  A face that’s his in a museum.  A life that he lost.  Friends he once had.  He reads and he learns.  He’s not the Winter Soldier.  Not anymore.  He is – _was_ – James Buchanan Barnes from Brooklyn, New York.  He was a Howling Commando and a war hero.  He was Captain America’s best friend ( _partner and lover and the other half of me, Buck.  I can’t even describe it_ ).  He was someone.

Maybe he can be again.

He runs.  He hides.  He can’t ever go back, not home to Brooklyn, not home to Siberia, not to the base in DC where they tried one last time to burn away the man with blond hair.  So he makes a new home.  He makes a new life while he tries to remember his old one.

And then it’s Christmas, 2014.  It’s snowing softly, a pretty, perfect snow.  The night is silent and peaceful.  Bucky’s sleeping on an old mattress in a crummy apartment in Bucharest, and he’s dreaming of the man on the bridge.   The man with the shield.  The man with blue eyes and blond hair.  Captain America.

No.  He’s dreaming about Steve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Molodets, soldat._ \- Well done, soldier.


	13. 2017

It’s Christmas, 2017.

Funny that so much has happened, so much has changed, but somehow they’ve ended up right where they started.

Their new place in Brooklyn is really nice, nicer than Bucky deserves.  They just got here, just moved in together a couple days ago.  It’s huge, with shining hardwood floors and expensive carpet and state of the art appliances and all the amenities of an affluent, technologically advanced life.  Everything is sleek and fancy, from the televisions on the wall to the computers everywhere to the furniture in their living rooms (rooms _plural,_ as in more than one).  It’s too much sometimes, too many things and too much extravagance, so much that it’s dizzying.  Things are still very different, people and technology, and he doesn’t recognize much.

Save Steve.  Always Steve.

Bucky walks quietly and tentatively out of his bedroom.  He’s nervous, unable to force down his anxieties.  This is how it is now, as he tries to reclaim his life.  As he tries to recover from seventy years spent as a slave, as a monster, as the Winter Soldier.  They damaged his body, his mind, his very soul.  They did change him, fundamentally altered him, stole everything from him.  It’s been a battle to get it back, has been since the moment Steve found him last year in Bucharest, since the bunker in Siberia where their lives changed again and forever.  Steve brought him to Wakanda afterward, and the doctors and researchers there helped quiet the violence inside.  For a while he slept again, this time with Steve there watching, waiting, hoping.  For a while, he slept.

Now he’s awake.  The doctors finally found a way to treat the damage, to expunge the programming from his brain.  They did that, and it hurt, but in the wake of the procedure he feels… better.  More grounded maybe.  More at peace with himself.  After that, his recovery truly began.  With Steve’s help, he’s slowly, patiently been bringing _Bucky_ out of what remains of his mind.  Even with the darkness they put inside him gone, he’s never going to be who he was.  Not exactly.  He realized that before Steve did, he thinks.  Sometimes Steve still can’t come to terms with it, though he does everything he can to hide how that hurts him.  Steve has a lot of guilt.  He blames himself for letting Bucky fall, for all the hell that’s befallen him.  Bucky’s not sure of much anymore, but he is sure that’s a load of nonsense.  It’s not Steve’s fault.  It’s no one’s.

Acceptance isn’t easy, not for either of them.

Still, they struggle through it together.  Despite the chaos in the world in the wake of what happened with Stark’s son in that bunker in Siberia, Steve’s never left Bucky’s side, not even for a second.  He’s been nothing but gentle, even when Bucky has lost his control and the monster has escaped the cage they’re trying to build, even when Bucky’s hurt him.  He’s been nothing but patient, weathering Bucky’s ups and downs with him, holding him through his nightmares, coaxing him through the moments where he withdraws.  And he’s been nothing but certain that they can fix this, fix Bucky.  He’s been strong and stalwart and unwavering.  He’s been _Steve_ , exactly the man Bucky’s remembering more and more as the damage heals and the pain recedes.  That more than anything helps Bucky have faith.

And that’s why Steve deserves this.  It’s Christmas, and Steve’s worked out some sort of arrangement with the US government (mostly with Stark) to come home, to come out of hiding.  They’ve been fugitives for so long that returning to the States seems strange to them both.  Whatever deal Steve’s brokered doesn’t make him happy; Bucky can tell he’s been struggling with it, with giving up the shield.  With letting go of being Captain America.  There’s not exactly a place for their old ideals in this time and place.  That’s been something of a side issue to the greater ones of helping Bucky recover himself, but it’s there.  At any rate, Steve’s sacrificed a lot to see this happen, to see Bucky get better and them both get home.  Everything he’s built in the future.  The Avengers.  Captain America.  His place among his family and friends.  He spent last Christmas alone, wandering the Wakandan palace like a ghost (so said T’Challa anyway, with a sad look on his face that made Bucky feel nothing but guilty though it wasn’t his fault.  He’s getting the impression there’s a long history, a tradition he supposes, of one or the other of them thinking he’s ruined Christmas when it’s never been _either_ of their faults).  T’Challa said Steve hovered outside Bucky’s cryostasis tube with a haunted look in his eyes the entire holiday.  Keeping vigil.  Waiting.  Waiting to have Bucky back.  Giving, just as he always has.

_That’s why he deserves everything I can give him._

It’s late Christmas Eve.  A lot of the apartment is dark and everything is quiet.  Bucky pads softly from his bedroom to the living room, where the tree is huge and brightly lit and full of silver and gold.  Steve’s sitting there on the couch next to is, dressed in jeans and a red hooded sweatshirt.  His sketchpad is open on his lap, but he’s not drawing anything.  He hasn’t drawn much that Bucky’s seen, not in months.  He’s just staring at the tree, eyes a million miles away.  Pensive and a little sad and a lot exhausted.  Bucky watches him for a moment, watches the lights from the tree reflect in his eyes.  The thousand-yard stare.  Bucky’s seen a lot of that.  That he knows.  He’s seen it on Steve before.  He catches it on himself sometimes in the mirror of the bathroom or in the faint reflection of his face in a car window.  He hates it.

And he hates how small and worn Steve looks.  They’re decades from where they began, two lifetimes full of changes and pain more than laughter and good memories.  Steve’s wearing every second of what they’ve been through on his face, in his eyes.  Bucky can see that.  His memories aren’t all coming back at once, but they are coming back, and the Steve he knows now is the same as the Steve he used to be in a lot of ways but very different in others.  That’s taking _him_ some getting used to, reconciling the Steve from his memories with this Steve.  Sometimes Bucky can’t come to terms with that, either, and it hurts him, too.  He looks down at the little box he has in his hands, wrapped in shiny green paper with a red bow on top.  He knows this is right.  What they do.  Who they are.  He swallows down the persistent doubt, the touch of fear, and feeling of not being comfortable in his own skin that’s continually haunting him.  He _is_ right.

When it comes to Steve, he’s always known what to do.

So he takes a deep breath and walks barefoot out into the living room.  The expensive carpet is firm under his toes, firm and a little prickly, so far from the cold wood floors of their apartment back in the day.  He pauses a moment, and that’s all it takes for Steve to snap from his reverie and raise his head.  He smiles and closes his empty sketchbook and sets it aside.  “Hey,” he softly greets.

“Hey,” Bucky says back. 

Steve gives a small grin.  He glances around almost incredulously.  “No great shakes, huh?”

Bucky manages a little laugh.  “Yeah.”

It grows silent.  Steve’s smile slips, and doubt crawls into his eyes.  When Bucky was suffering so horribly last year, that doubt was there often.  While Steve’s always so strong and sure that Bucky can be who he was, he’s less certain about how to get him there.  He tries not to push, not to have expectations that aren’t reasonable, but everything’s been so wild and chaotic that it’s hard to know what’s reasonable and what’s selfish and what’s not.  Bucky knows things now.  He knows he and Steve were – _are_ – childhood friends, best friends, lovers, _in love with each other._   He knows that.  But it’s awkward because sometimes it doesn’t feel real.  Sometimes he still can’t feel, can’t exist outside his head.  He knows that’s another thing that hurts Steve a great deal, and he hates that, too, that Steve walks on eggshells sometimes around him.  That Steve wants more, wants what they had, and is too respectful to ask.  That Steve loves him too much to push.

It’s like when they were younger in a way.  Bucky remembers more and more of those long years spent pining every day, every moment, every time he looks at Steve.  God, it tortures him now, how many days and hours and moments he wasted too afraid to tell Steve how he feels.  He can’t even remember why he kept it a secret, not clearly.  Whatever the reasons were, they weren’t worth it.  Steve’s here.  Steve’s open and beautiful and loving.  Steve’s wants everything he’s willing to give.

And Bucky wants to give everything to him, starting with this.  He’s not going to make that same mistake again.  He’s not going to be afraid of what how feels and how deeply he feels it.  So he gathers himself and hands Steve the box.  Steve’s forehead furrows in confusion.  “What’s this?”

“Open it.”

The surprised expression on Steve’s face slowly tightens into a frown.  They haven’t exactly discussed Christmas.  With everything that’s gone on, the Accords and Bucky’s treatment and recovery, that seemed stupid and totally irrelevant.  It was enough to _get_ here, to reach this point, to come home to Brooklyn with both of them free.  Bucky can hear the words before they’re even out of Steve’s mouth because he’s said them lots of times before and Bucky knows that now.  “Naw, Buck, you didn’t have to get me anything.  I can’t take this.  I didn’t get you anything.”

 _Yes, you did._   His mind goes back to a Christmas long ago, a simpler one where they only had each other and a tree and the one gift Bucky got Steve.  It’s a really good memory.  And Steve’s a blind, stupid fool if he can’t see just how much he’s given Bucky.  How much he always has and always will from their first moments together to right here and now.  “I don’t want anything.  And it doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah, it does,” Steve argues.  “It’s not–”

“Shut up,” he murmurs, sitting gently beside Steve on the couch, “and open it.  Please.”

Steve stares at him a moment more, cradling the little box in his hands.  Bucky smiles.  It’s hard to relax, hard to push down the damage inside even around Steve, but he takes another breath and forces himself to.  He nods.

Steve sighs, and his frown twists into a touched smile.  He leans back in his seat, fingers going to the bow on the box.  Bucky’s nervous.  He doesn’t know why exactly.  Part of it, he supposes, is familiar and even a little mundane: the want for Steve to be happy.  The want to please Steve.  But there’s more to it.  He can’t explain it.  This is them, and it’s stupid and silly but so meaningful, and he wants Steve to see that, too.

Steve does.  The second he unwraps the paper and opens the little box and picks through the tissue inside, _he does._   His face goes lax.  “Buck?”

“It’s, um…”  Bucky’s heart is pounding, and his mouth feels as dry as a desert.  He’s trembling, but he reaches over to move the paper out of the way.  He manages a grin.  “It’s not _exactly_ the same as the one we had.  I couldn’t find a replica, even with the internet and eBay and–”

“Buck–”

“But I figured this is pretty close, you know?”

Steve pulls the little toy soldier out of the box.  The silver glints in the low light of the room, catching the colorful glow of the Christmas tree as Steve lifts it on his palm.  It’s no bigger than the other one, even looks like it used to, with a soldier pointing outward to lead his troops.  It’s a more modern soldier, probably from World War II or later, but the detail is stunning.  Bucky smiles sheepishly.  “Stupid, right?  But I thought, you know, maybe we could…”  Bucky shrugs to hide his fear and throws his heart and his hopes out there.  “Restart the tradition?”

For a long time, Steve just looks at it.  Then he turns to Bucky, eyes watery and lips in a shaking smile.  It’s that smile.  The one Bucky loves.  The one he always wants on Steve’s face.  The one he always wants to give him.  It’s there, and it’s special and perfect and so beautiful, and Steve’s given him the world.  Bucky can’t ask for anything more than that.  “Merry Christmas, Steve,” he whispers.

Steve gasps a little sob.  He could have said a lot of things – _you remembered thank God I was scared I want you back so bad I love you I love you forever_ – but he doesn’t.  He just says, “It’s my turn, huh?”

Bucky smiles, too, and the tension completely fades from him.  Who he was comes back like a warm, welcome wave, and he leans close to Steve.  “Think so.”

Steve clenches the little toy soldier tight in one hand, takes Bucky’s shoulder in his other.  Wraps him up tight in his arms, turns on the sofa to tug Bucky between his legs and onto his chest.  He holds him tight.  Bucky doesn’t cringe, doesn’t flinch.  Doesn’t do anything other than kiss him, sweet and sure, as sweet and sure as it ever was.  It goes on, this wondrous reaffirmation.  He sees himself in Steve’s blue eyes.  He tastes Steve’s tears, his lips.  He slides his hands up Steve’s sweatshirt just to be closer, just to feel Steve’s smooth skin and his lungs breathing nice and easy and his heart beating beneath his hands.  He knows.  He _knows_ Steve again.  Knows who he is, too.  That’s the sweetest affirmation of them all.  It doesn’t matter how things have changed, how they’ve changed.  With Steve, he’s always known who he is, no matter what. 

And it’s Christmas.  They’re here.  They’re home.  Steve’s not Captain America now.  Bucky’s not the Winter Soldier anymore.  They’re not anything other than who they’ve always been.  _Steve and Bucky.  Bucky and Steve._

Together, just as they’re meant to be.

**THE END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, everyone, for reading this little trip down Stucky angst lane. I'm getting more and more of a feeling for writing them (and enjoying it a lot, too) so expect more from me for this pairing in the future. Special thanks to everyone who left comments and kudos; they were much appreciated. Happy holidays and a happy New Year to you all!
> 
> Come find me on [tumblr](http://thegraytigress.tumblr.com)!


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